Everyone needs a place. A place to rest and recover, to
ponder and be refreshed. A layby along the way.
I have a prayer alcove. When my husband and sons were
rebuilding our living room, with its very thick, old walls, one son suggested
creating a prayer seat for me in one of the windows.
It is my place of retreat. It is right in the living room,
but when I sink onto that seat, I turn off from the jobs around me
and slip into a more pensive and prayerful mood. One of my Bibles is there, and
various notebooks and crosses and prayers. I’ve had a candle there sometimes,
and just thought this morning I should keep my MP3 player there so that I can
be refreshed sometimes with praise music.
Psalm 63 is one of my favourite pieces of Scripture. It begins: ‘O God, you are my God, earnestly
I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary
land where there is no water.’
In a dry and weary land where there is no water.
It hasn’t stopped pouring rain here for weeks, maybe months.
Don texted me this morning that the roads were flooded.
I am not in a dry and
weary land where there is no water.
But it reminds me of a line from Coleridge’s Rime of the
Ancient Mariner. ‘Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.’
The water flooding our roads and fields does not offer the
refreshment I get when I sink onto my seat in my prayer alcove.
On the last and greatest day of the
Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him
come to me and drink. Whoever believes
in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within
him.” John 7:37.
Jesus is the source of life-giving, refreshing water. When I
drink from him, I am renewed, and I can splash out into soggy Scotland with a
singing heart.
Where do you go when you are dry and weary?
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