Glum

 

What’s the day like, Don asked as I opened the curtains.

Glum.

The grey mist hangs heavy, swirling round the tops of the trees which weren’t felled. Generous drops plop into swelling puddles on the driveway outside the prayer window. Cows graze ‘our’ field, content to hunker down, some of them lying in the grass chewing their cuds while the rain falls.

I was surprised to encounter my own writing this morning. I’d forgotten that I’d contributed a reflection on my favourite psalm in a selection by other writers in BRF’s Day by Day with God. My favourite psalm is 63; it was my spiritual crutch in the grieving months after my sister died.

I opened my Bible and re-read the familiar psalm. Then I looked at the words I’d written. Quoting from the psalm, it is printed there ‘in a dry and parched land where there is no water.’ Parched, not weary. Both my NIV translations say weary. Weary is such a rich word, redolent with layers of feeling. Much richer than parched, which only conveys a physical lack: thirst. In those grieving months it was a weariness I felt, not a thirst.

I don’t know where the word got changed, or by who, but at the risk of being labelled as pedantic, I prefer ‘weary’. I know when I first clung to that Psalm, my condition was one of weariness, weariness with the sorrowful condition of this fallen world, and not thirst.

So as the raindrops cascade all around this morning, I think of my description of the day. Glum. It’s possible to be weary even in the rain, even when not parched. Go with me on this. I think that it is possible to be standing in the midst of a spiritual shower of blessing, and still be glum, still be weary. And I concede there is a sense of thirst in that, in that if only one turns her face towards the heavens and opens her mouth, her thirst will be quenched. The water Jesus gives satisfies right down to our deepest need, but it’s possible to stand wearily in the divine rain, head hung and gaze turned inward, and still feel parched.

I don’t actually feel weary or glum or parched today, but I know that this Psalm has the thirst-quenching solution for the next time I do. Look up, turn your face to the Lord, open your mouth and praise him. As the praise flows out, so the water of life flows in, refreshing, restoring, and satisfying the deepest need.

Because Your love is better than life, my lips will praise you.