The will to obey.

Deep calls to deep

    at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
    have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands His steadfast love,
    and at night His song is with me,
    a prayer to the God of my life. Psalm 42:7-8

Oh the deep, deep love of Jesus 
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free 
Rolling as a mighty ocean 
In its fullness over me.

Lord, we pray not to get lost in the reality of our own depravity, but rather to find ourselves morning by morning in the light of Your mercy and redemption. Amen

New every morning, great is Thy faithfulness.

I shall not want, when I taste Your goodness.

When I am bowed down with sorrow I will lift up Your name

And the foxes in the vineyard will not steal my joy,

For You are good to me, good to me,

And I lift my eyes to the hills from where my heart is from

Your goodness and Your mercy shall follow me all of my life

I trust in Your goodness,

I trust in Your promise.

You liberate me from my own noise and my own chaos

From the chains of a lesser law You set me free

In the silence of the heart You speak

And it there that I will know You and You know me

You satisfy me till I am quiet and confident

In the work of the Spirit I cannot see.

In the silence of the heart You speak.

So yesterday momma and I helped out at the Interfaith Packathon, two hundredish people at the Muslim Community Center measuring exactly 388-390 grams of rice and beans dried vegetables and vitamins and spices into then sealed bags, 50,000 meals. And the event began with prayer, and there was a break for the two o’clock prayers as well.

And the heart-piercingly beautiful call to worship brought back so many memories of dusty skies over wide rivers.

And as the men knelt down on spread out carpets, I joined them in their prayer: Dear LORD God of heaven and earth, please reveal Yourself.  And may we have eyes to see and ears to hear.  And the will to obey. 

Dear LORD God of heaven and earth, here I am once again.

And I find myself much like Meg and Jo in Little Women, murmuring about once again shouldering the daily burdens after the holidays, “Oh, dear, how hard it does seem to take up our packs and go on,” sighed Meg the morning after the party, for now the holidays were over, the week of merrymaking did not fit her for going on easily with the tasks of every day life.

And me, huh. I had two weeks of beyond-imagination merrymaking, full of dinner parties and bouquets by my bedside from my beautiful sister, and parties and a lovely drive home and reading and resting and not working, because washing dishes is not work.

But of course, good old Marmee spoke truth into the story, “We are never too old for this, my dear, because it is a play we are playing all the time in one way or another. Our burdens are here, our road is before us, and the longing for goodness and happiness is the guide that leads us through many troubles and mistakes to the peace which is a true Celestial City.”

The will to obey.

Audrey Assad has sung truth into my morning as well.

You dwell in the songs that we are singing,
Rising to the Heavens, rising to Your heart, Your heart.
Our praises filling up the spaces
In between our frailty and everything You are
You are the keeper of my heart

And I'm restless, I'm restless
'Til I rest in You, 'til I rest in You
I am restless, I'm restless
'Til I rest in You, 'til I rest in You
Oh God, I wanna rest in You

The peace.

And because momma and I are a little crazy, we start off Sundays eating breakfast together over the both the New York Times and The Arizona Daily Star, and then we go on over to Trinity Presbyterian for the breaking of the bread and the passing of the peace, before we head off to our other places of worship.

The peace.

May it be so.