Tuesday, June 15, 2004 AD Well, I'm Sure Not Thinking Very Corporately Today, Either The past few days have definitely been an individual warfare time -- to the point where I almost refrained from taking the Lord's Supper on Sunday.
On the first Sunday of this year I got to worship at St. Peter on my way home from Alabama. Laurence was preaching on Nehemiah 8, and when he got to the bit where the Levites had to shush the weeping people, he said, by way of application, that it is imperative that we come to the Lord's Table joyfully, and that it's a sin to come otherwise. I've been conscious of that every time I've come to the Table since then.
Well, joyful wasn't coming easy on Sunday. I was close to tears most of the service -- straining for repentance, my outstretched fingers seeming to brush against but not quite grasp forgiveness -- and when the moment came to receive the bread and wine, I was still wrestling with my attitude, trying to push myself into some semblance of gladness. I'm not sure how successful I was. My silent prayer -- "Feed me, feed me, feed me...I believe You, I believe You, I believe You," was rather forced -- but I ate and drank, hoping that His hold on me was strong though mine on Him was weak, and that my momentarily despairing perception did not measure up to reality.
Monday and this morning were in much the same vein -- a dreary-souled funk -- though without the opportunity for worship. When I wrote yesterday's post I was aware of my hypocrisy -- I couldn't even bring myself to use song as a psychological trick, much less as a spiritual weapon. So I turned elsewhere for help this afternoon and listened to some Psalms while I worked, which I think has been beneficial, and I trust not just as a psychological trick. I listened to about the first third of the book of Psalms, and though I couldn't give them my full attention (happily, I was working with images rather than words most of the day, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to give them any attention), the familiar words wrapped themselves around me like a swaddling blanket, soothing and settling and securing.
I think this was more effective than singing would have been. For one thing, singing was more active a thing than I could muster the will to do. In my brokenness there was no strength for doing; I needed to be done to. And I couldn't lift up my head so high as to sing; I needed to be lifted up. God's Word really is His words. Though someone else was reading, He was speaking -- of Himself and of me, of His people and of His enemies, of wisdom and wrath and fear and holiness and rebuke and mercy and truth and love. Here is a rock to stand on. Here is sanity. Here is shalom. Posted by Valerie (Kyriosity) at 6/15/2004 07:52:00 PM
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