Morning

The morning sun just rising over the eastern mountains cutting slices of reality with its sharp shafts of rose-red light claiming its share of the white stucco walls of old Portland row houses, and the birds strangely silent, perhaps watching with stunned anticipation the arrival of another cloudless day, and me sitting quietly looking beyond mere computer screens into the world’s utter west, populated by trees upon trees, greens now slowly awakening to the gold-washed waves pouring over them, and wondering what the day will bring. My morning tasks still unformed in the empty future ahead of me, one unpleasant task, the return of a broken-glassed picture frame that would not yield to assembly.

What treasures will arrive on my doorstep today? Already they have been piling up against my unopened front door, waiting for me to discover them. Joy, joy amidst suffering, blending what cannot be with what is, and all held in fragile friendship in the hands of God, who for the love of his suffering siblings joined them to prove on the battlefield of His body that victory is at the bottom of defeat, and that redemption can be purchased only at a price beyond our paying, and that of all worlds this one is the best and only, because our Beloved has pierced our defenses and shown us the way out, to perfect freedom, fearless, radiant, unfleshly and immortal. He is glorified by the piping of a solitary bird that now sings, again and again, the threefold call, ‘holy, holy, holy,’ out of the wooded depths.

Your day, O Lord, your day that you have bestowed on us, grant us to behold your face in every moment, and feel your touch.
Savior, come, and do not delay.