Your word is a lamp for my feet. Psalm 119:105

This trenchant verse from Psalm 119, remarkable for its teaching about surrender to God’s will, stops me in my tracks, interrupts the monkey chatter in my brain, and lowers me within wells of silence—Something demands my full attention.

Snippets of obsession break even further apart until their disappearance. Stillness soothes my wounded psyche, relaxes chest muscles, and throws open the doors of inner hearing. Within this oasis of peace, I wait for the word to manifest.

At times, its message is to remain quiet, do nothing; at others, in a wee small voice, it counsels action. Such guidance is critical for each day’s gentling my terminal illness with consciousness and patience. It does not take much to hurtle my serenity off the cliff into nowhereland filled with beasties. I’ve been there. I know.

Such are the vicissitudes of spiritual growth: messy, muddled, scruffy, sloppy, ratty. Within such barrenness emerge wondrously-wrought creations, not of our making, creations scintillating with splendor.

Eternal life must be similar.