‘To you I pray, Lord.
At daybreak you hear my voice;
at daybreak I lay my case before you
and fix my eyes on you.’
(Psalm 5:3)
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The new day dawns; misty, with a gradually increasing hint of blue in the draining greyness of the sky. No breath of wind: no wind, no breeze, no breath. Not a single leaf stirs.At daybreak you hear my voice;
at daybreak I lay my case before you
and fix my eyes on you.’
(Psalm 5:3)
.
The gap between trees, where the slope of North Hill props up the southern end of the sky, is a uniform pale grey; the hills have yet to be born into my day.
A brightening: mist bleaching from grey to white; unfocussed shafts of light as the sun begins taking command of the scene, and draws the autumnal quilt from this corner of the Earth – the green acre in which my family has made a home.
And now, in that wedge of distance, from within the thinning mist, a diagonal line appears; and in the darkening of the space beneath, a reassurance that the world is as it had been the previous day: the rebirth of granite hills into my certainties.
At the centre of my view, amid the first gentle stirrings of leaves on the nearest Ash tree as the Spirit of God moves through the garden, a deeper waving of a high Beech branch seems to beckon me: ‘come, up, out, and into the world’. A Collared Dove has alighted at the branch’s tip, and as its perch settles into stillness once more, the Dove’s swaying body rejoins the unwavering steadiness of its head.
It remains for a while, appearing to return my gaze through the window, until, setting the branch into a repeat of its gentle beckoning, it flies toward me, up and over the house.
God’s touch continues to shimmer among the leaves, and the Spirit stirs once more within me.
Not only the few minutes it has seemed: the clock shows evidence of another time, another place, another life.
Not just a brief appreciation of a beautiful morning: an hour and a half has come, settled, and flown into the awakening day.
The book I had been about to open still lies untouched beside me, and I am returned, awake, from time spent in the peace and the presence of God. – I know what I shall write today.
‘My heart is ready, God,
I will sing and make music;
come, my glory!
Awake, lyre and harp,
I will awake the Dawn!’
(Psalm 108:1-2)
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I will sing and make music;
come, my glory!
Awake, lyre and harp,
I will awake the Dawn!’
(Psalm 108:1-2)
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