Spark to rekindle your heart

 

Last week, we let the psalms inspire and infuse our imaginations in ways that (hopefully) helped you find your voice as you translated what you read into your own words.  The Psalms lend us a religious language, we can borrow the imagery from the words ~ adopting and adapting the words to what is in our hearts/souls/minds in the moment.  The Psalms warm up our souls, give us permission to be honest ~ raw and real with God about our thoughts and emotions.  Our prayers don’t have to be polished perfectly.  In fact, God isn’t sitting around waiting for you to make sure your verb tenses agree.  God isn’t watching to make sure you don’t end your prayer with a preposition ~ I can feel my 3^rd grade teacher shutter from such a thought!  This week, as you read Psalms 13-20, I invite you to find words that are playful.  To be clear, this will be challenging in some of the psalms you will be reading.  You might even hear the Mission Impossible music playing in the background.  For example, Psalm 13 starts out, “How long, O Eternal One?  How long will you forget me?  Forever?” (The Voice translation).

I can hear you thinking, “Welp, thanks for that uplifting verse of scripture, Pastor Eeyore!”  How can we be playful when God feels distant, or our energy is drained, or we just want God to swoop in like Wonder Woman to save the day?  I am glad you asked!  Not every verse of Scripture will warm your heart this week.  What I am asking and inviting is for you to search for playful verbs in each Psalm.  Put on your Sherlock Holmes hat and search for the wildness of the sacredness right there in each psalm. 

For me, in Psalm 13 verse 3, the Psalmist say, “Put a spark of life in my eyes.”  What a wonderful prayer petition to God.  Put a spark, rekindle the fire of my soul, light a match in the midnight moments of this week, O God.  Let Your light, O God, be what draws me in like a moth to a flame.  Let Your presence be bright when all else is bleak.  Let my soul be warmed and my heart ablaze because You are God.  Where is God putting a spark in your life today?  Notice and name this.  Where is the sacred stirring and swirling?  Sometimes, we need to cry out, to release the pain to open space for God to enter in and redeem the ache with a spark that rekindles your heart.  May this truth open you this day and week as we play with and pray the words of the Psalms.  Amen.