| He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds. He counts the stars and calls them all by name. |
| Psalm 147: 3 - 4 |
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Keeping
I was reading along in my One Year Bible one morning, and was almost to the end of my fourth or fifth (I've lost track) calendar year's reading when I read the following:
He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds. He counts the stars and calls them all by name.
Psalm 147: 3 - 4
For me, these verses, one right after the other, leapt off the page, painting an amazing picture of the expansive nature of God's character. The same God who counts stars and calls them by name, bandages an individual's wounds and heals a broken heart. He is conversant with human beings and the universe, mindful of the individual and the vast, the ordinary and the extraordinary. Amazing!
Why keep reading the same scriptures over and over, year after year? I've read those verses in Psalm 147 in that same order many times, but have never noticed how much they were saying simply by being next to each other. There is always something new to see, even when moving through the familiar.
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Albert Einstein said, "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving." Reportedly, Einstein rode his bike often, and even thought of his theory of relativity while riding his bike. Perhaps the familiar motion freed his mind. Perhaps it was the wind in that long, wild hair of his that cleared the way. Who knows? In any case, there is always something new to discover, even while, or maybe especially while, doing the familiar.
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Over the years, friends have given me practical gifts to use while doing the familiar--cooking and baking, gardening, reading, writing. I keep these items and use them--kitchen utensils, serving dishes, coffee mugs, notebooks, pens and pencils, bookmarks, etc.--not only as reminders of the good times and conversations we've shared, but also as reminders to pray for the giver. For example, when I'm baking bread, the dough cutter/scraper Janice gave me many years ago when our children were all still at home, small and needy and underfoot while we were trying to make supper, reminds me to pray for her and her husband, Johnny, and their now-grown children and grandchildren. Their family dynamics and prayer needs, like ours, have changed over the years, and so has my prayer life.
When I was younger in both years and faith, Paul's instruction in his first letter to the Thessalonians, Pray without ceasing, seemed impossible, but now I understand that he wasn't talking exclusively about folded-hands prayer, but instead was recommending a continuous attitude of prayer as we, busy-handed, move through the familiar of ordinary days. Keeping an attitude of prayer when our hands are submerged in hot, soapy dishwater, or in the oily innards of an engine as my husband's and sons' hands have been lately, is one way to pray without ceasing. Another bonus to praying at times like these is that we won't be tempted to pray fancy, flowery prayers. Practical, hands-on prayers are much more likely.
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Is 2017 looking to be much the same for you as 2016? Does the new year seem to promise the same old same old while by comparison others' lives seem to promise the new and exciting? Or maybe your new year promises to be as different from the old as this guy's. . . .
On the first day of the new year, ten and a half months after the flood began, the floodwaters had almost dried up from the earth. Noah lifted back the covering of the boat and saw that the surface of the ground was drying (Genesis 8:13).
Imagine lifting the lid on a whole new landscape! Was Noah thrilled or terrified? Maybe a bit of both. No matter whether we're moving through a familiar or completely foreign landscape this year, there is always something new to discover if we keep moving and have the eyes to see. Lord, give us the eyes to see.
Daye Phillippo,
January 2017