Waiting for God
“O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
My eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
But, I have calmed and quieted my soul,
Like a weaned child with its mother;
My soul is like the weaned child that is with me.” Psalm 131
I come to early church with all the concerns of the day, the present week, and the past week. I am not playing the harp because I have difficulty putting in new strings for two recently broken ones. It is the first meeting for discernment for the Daughters of the King at St. Mark’s. We have a wellness forum during the adult formation hour that I have been working on. Some pages are missing in the Eucharistic Prayer for the next service in the Altar Book.
I decide to go sit at the back of the church and try to quieten the busyness about these concerns and more. The church is absolutely quiet. The long green season hangings are more calming and simplistic with a hint of the ornamental. The candles are lighted and flickering. The summer flowers are in honor of the mother of a friend.
I am in a beautiful place built to bring us closer to God, but my head is still a mess. How can I see or taste a glimpse of the holy before the service starts? Must I wait for some moment during the liturgy, at the scripture, in the prayers, the sermon, the music, the Eucharist? I pray for guidance, actually for help. The message comes. Start intercessory prayers. You did not say your private prayers this morning before church. Too busy. I start praying for those I have committed to pray for each day. If I know them, I imagine them with Jesus. Almost immediately, I feel that peace that passes understanding, a calm.
Time after time, this is my experience. I begin to know a peace whenever I can get out of myself and my world and my concerns, and send love to my neighbor by visiting, calling, writing, serving, or a multitude of other ways, but especially in intercessory prayer. I rarely know how these prayers affect those I pray for, but with each prayer, my mind and my body also take me to find Jesus as I try to connect others to that healing love.
Joanna joannaseibert.com https://www.joannaseibert.com/