Psalm 130:6 (New International Version)
6 My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
"My soul waits..." and waits.... and waits...... "How long, O Lord?" I need an answer TODAY. I needed it YESTERDAY. But You give nothing. I seek advice among the beloved friends You gave me, but their advice sets my head spinning.
"Listen to the Lord's voice."
"Just Do It!"
"Follow your heart."
"Do what's good for your kids."
"You need that on your resume."
"Be yourself."
"Shut down ALL the voices and listen only for HIS."
I try to follow that last one especially. But there is nothing. I shut down all the voices still spinning in my head, and there is nothing.
I lie on the bed at 3:00 am and wait.... and wait... and wait.. There is nothing. I turn toward the window when I hear the birds begin to wake up and sing. There is light coming in the sky, beginning to turn the few leftover clouds to that magical morning color someone once called "sky-blue-pink", with a touch of gold: God's gold, I once read in a beautiful book. And the birds sing.
"My soul waits for the Lord." I pray. And pray some more. I try listening again, but one of the voices suddenly begins to chatter. I roll over, shutting it down once more, and another begins. Back to the window.
"My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen wait for the morning." I'm waiting for the morning too.
Perhaps that's my problem. I'm waiting for the morning, when I need to be waiting for the Lord.
How I love the morning! Especially in summer, and today is like summer, after the rain...
"...like the tender grass springing out of the earth, by clear shining, after rain, after rain, after rain...."
I've been waiting for the morning when I could have been waiting for the Lord. Nevertheless He comes, waiting or not. Just like the sun, after rain.
The answer has been lurking around in and through all my questions the whole time. It was in my counseling sessions twice, it was in a conversation with my sister. It was in my initial decision. And it's still there. I'm just afraid to take it.
So I wait for the Lord. Now the morning's come. I wait for the Lord. More than watchmen wait for the morning.
And He is faithful.
"He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.
"And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.
"Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow." 2 Samuel 3-5
I'm waiting...
1 I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD.
2 Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem.
3 Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together:
4 Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the LORD.
5 For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of David.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.
7 Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.
8 For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee.
9 Because of the house of the LORD our God I will seek thy good.
I love this Psalm, and not least because I first learned it in the choir at Bethany Church of Sierra Madre. Or was it Tustin Pres? I remember it was a great big choir, and they could sing rings around most church choirs at the time.
Years later I encountered it once again in Pennsylvania, where I was singing in the choir of Palm Lutheran Church, so named because it was created on Palm Sunday, though apt because it was located in Palmyra. The director was the organist, and was also Mennonite. I remember before the service that day he brought to mind news from Israel, bombings and war, and said this Psalm anthem was all the more poignant. He urged us to truly be in prayer "for the peace of Jerusalem".
Last year I participated in our Women's Spring Bible Study, in which we studied the Psalms of Ascent in a devotional series by Beth Moore called Stepping Up. It was truly a turning point in my life, about which I wrote on this blog. I learned to put myself in these Psalms as the travelers to Jerusalem would have. I learned so much about their richness, which we miss without knowing their history.
At that time I was feeling a call toward home, in more ways than one. I had just visited my childhood haunts in Southern California, and was full of homesickness, and I was feeling the beginnings of a great nesting urge that comes at this age, some have told me. And still I was feeling the homelessness I've felt since we first left the places of our childhood.
In addition, and perhaps most importantly, my heart thought it caught a voice calling me home to my faith.
In the year that has come between these intuitions and my present situation, so very much transpired that seemed to lead in the opposite direction from home. Multiple musical opportunities, which I would have given much for in prior years, especially when the children were babies, presented themselves without my asking. I seemed to have reached a plateau where I found myself interacting with the best of the best in my field, and without so much effort as in the past. They and I were simply there, together, on the same plain. Was this not a sign that I was supposed to take that direction?
So much happened in our family since that time last spring when I knew exactly in what direction I was meant to go. Everything that happened made me doubt. I doubted my intuition. I doubted my abilities. I doubted my identity. I doubted my usefulness. I doubted my marriage. I doubted my God. I followed the rabbit of self-fulfillment down his hole for many months. I leaned unto my own understanding.
In the midst of my explorations, I completely forgot the lessons learned in Stepping Up, totally lost the peace and fellowship of my sisters bonded by that time together in study and prayer. My words about the Psalms of Ascent lay fallow on my blog, and I forgot my own writings which sprang from the depths of my innermost soul.
And God let me wander. Someone has said God gives us enough rope to hang ourselves; or He gives us just enough to go as far as we need away from Him to realize we want to turn around. And when we do, the rope is there. I believe this after this year. God let me go so far down those rabbit holes!
But then by grace I turned around. I heard a whisper, felt a nudge, came to the end of the rope. There was no other choice. I turned around.
I remember the sheer joy in the voices of the choirs I've sung this Psalm with. For years I've wished our director would choose more of the old anthems, as we certainly have the choir to handle them. Last spring I asked her about this one, but haven't seen it emerge. Maybe one day she will think of it, but I remember well enough for myself.
A great shout and a holy joy: "I WAS GLAD..... I WAS GLAD..... I WAS GLAD when they said unto me ......!!"
Yes! I am GLAD!!
"Our feet are standing within thy gates, O Jerusalem!
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. They prosper who love thee. Peace be within these walls...."
Amen!
y said, “Let’s go for a ride!” and we piled in the car.
“Where are we going, Daddy?” we asked excitedly. Sometimes Daddy’s “rides” took us only to the store, sometimes to the beach, sometimes we ended up at Grandma’s. Depending on what kind of day it had been I would be anything from disappointed to elated to down-right depressed at the end of them. But I would never deny I thoroughly enjoyed the “ride” in our old, turquoise, Dodge station-wagon. It had brought us all the way across Dixie from Atlanta, with us singing “California, here I come, right back where I started from!” at the top of our lungs, led by Daddy, for whom alone the song was true. We four girls including Mama were each and every one born in the Atlanta area.
“Don’t know,” said Daddy. “Wherever we end up, I guess. Let’s just go for a ride.”
“Ok!” we said, wanderlust burning in our young hearts so we couldn’t sit still on the vinyl-upholstered, bench seats. Janice, as usual, had parked in the middle of the front seat, next to Daddy. She always got to go there because she was the baby. I liked the back window best. I could gaze out as long as I liked and watch the tumbleweeds go by …. Or the concrete …. Or sagebrush ….. Or tract homes. Whatever it was going by the window I didn’t always see it anyway. My mind was usually far , far away in a daydream about heroes and heroines and castles and battles won and horses faithful … or dogs … and filled always with singing singing singing. There wasn’t a thing alive I knew that didn’t have a song with it in my mind. I sang (or hummed, when there weren’t any words) my favorite TV shows’ themes over and over in my mind, and sometimes just under the noise of the car so the rest of the family wouldn’t hear me and comment. Or other times I sang along with my mother and sisters to keep Daddy awake on a long drive, like when we kept on driving one day and ended up in the desert. 1,000 Palms, they said it was. Were there really a thousand?
“Did you count them, Daddy? How do you know there are a thousand?”
Daddy coasted the Dodge along the side of the road, out in nowhere. He cut the engine and turned off the lights.
“What’s going on, Daddy? Why did you stop?”
“Tell Kathy to quit poking me! Stop it!”
“She did it first!”
“Now quiet down, settle down!” Daddy’s voice took on his authority figure sound. It wasn’t quite real, it was his fake superior officer voice he used to make us laugh at home sometimes when Mom gave him the job of quieting the herd because her hands were in spaghetti or something. Daddy liked to do that voice. He could pretend he was something more than a seaman 1st class in the Navy or a corporal in the Army. It always backfired, though, because we just got the giggles and couldn’t stop, which was louder than the fighting sometimes.
“Now be very, very quiet,” Daddy lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “You want to see something you’ll never see at home?”
“What?” we all whispered.
“Well,” Daddy liked to take his time. “If you get out of the car and stay right next to it …” we hung on his every word, “… then you just tip your head back as far as it can go….”
“Yeah?” said Janice. She was the baby.
“Be quiet!” I said, “Daddy’s telling us!”
“Shh ….” said Kathy.
“All right, settle down. Let’s go outside and you’ll see.” Daddy grabbed Janice as she tried to rush off into the sand. She was the baby. “Stay right here, Dewey.” She did. I guess she did. I don’t remember having to go look for her so she must have. But she really must have been quite a baby still, because she doesn’t seem to remember this kind of thing the way I and Kathy do. But I digress.
We all stepped outside the car over Mom’s protests. She didn’t think it was quite safe, but came along to help protect us from the desert. We stood quite close to Daddy, because the night was suddenly very sand, and we had the feeling there was just something not quite right about a family of five and their Dodge station-wagon stopping in the desert in the night to see something they couldn’t see at home.
But Daddy was there. Big and strong and not afraid. And so we weren’t either. We were big and strong and not afraid next to Daddy.
“Now,” said Daddy in a church voice. “You’re all growing up in the city kind of, and things are getting all built up there so you can’t see the things we used to see every day growing up. Where we live it used to be all trees and orange groves. But out here it’s still just the way nature made it. My dad used to take us out here so we could see this, and so I brought you all out so you can too. Now, look straight up, and tell me what you see.”
We looked up, and “oohed” with amazement.
“You can’t see ‘em like that where we live,” said Daddy. “Stars in a desert sky shine brighter than anywhere else.”
“Why, Daddy?” Kathy asked.
“Because the air is so dry there’s no clouds or mist in between, and there’s no smog either. Also all the city lights make the stars look dim where we live. Here they shine so brightly …..” and Daddy seemed to be seeing something far in the heavens.
“Just as God created them,” said Mama. “The sun to rule the day and the stars to rule the night …” She snuggled up next to Daddy, who put his arm around her.
We took deep breaths of the sun-scorched pure air of the desert. It smelled like tumbleweeds, I thought. Daddy and Mama heaved heavy sighs, and Mama started singing a hymn. We all got back in the car and joined in Mama’s singing. Mama had such a pretty voice, so soft and sweet.