The Comforter’s Psalm
Too long I have wandered the city’s deserted streets:
Whispering from corner to corner, “Are You here Lord?”
In the after-hours hush of darkened office corridors:
I lose sight of Your Sunday presence.
The heat of workday battles deaden the soul:
Heart of Your connection, forced to remote corners.
My days fill with trivial pursuits, incessant demands and towering deadlines:
That push aside time for You and time for me.
I struggle to do, yet yearn to be:
Even momentarily still, in touch with You.
Yet in the midst of all this endless endeavour:
You, Lord, remain – the ever-present constant of life.
Quietly, unexpectedly, occasionally You break through:
Into my obsessive consciousness – a subtle ray of light.
Touching my shoulder, You whisper your song of comfort:
Assuring me of meaning, peace and future.
I wonder at Your faithfulness to me:
Amidst my fears, mistrust and forgetfulness of You.
How persistent and searching is Your love, Oh Lord:
Calming, restoring and shaping my days and nights.
Time and time again You draw me back:
Filling my cup with Your deepest sighs and prayers.
How vast is Your horizon and how deep is Your love:
That wraps me and enfolds my being?
You lift me up when I am least conscious:
Rescue me when I am least deserving.
My prayers for Your presence are answered before they are uttered:
You travel with me closer than my shadow.
All I need to do is stop and listen:
Meeting you in the quiet breeze of the moment.
Thankyou for Your comforting gift:
That inner voice, stilling presence and constant reassurance.
A Psalm by Lee Parker
3 Responses to “The Comforter’s Psalm”
Dear Lee,
Thank you for sharing your eloquence, your intimate self, and your precious moments of resonance with the Divine. Your doublets triggered so many parallelisms that punctuated my professional life, and, to a lesser degree persist in retirement. I especially love these lines:
Quietly, unexpectedly, occasionally You break through:
Into my obsessive consciousness – a subtle ray of light.
For too many years I have questioned — perhaps even resented — the ‘occasional’ nature of intimacy with the Divine. I have recently concluded that my relationship with the God that I grew up with has been sadly restricted by the dualistic perspectives that are deeply entrenched in our cultural conditioning. Your ‘subtle ray of light’ is so suggestive of both the subtleties and illumination that I’m gleaning from the fields of consciousness studies and quantum perspectives. I am slowly discovering the monistic ‘Mind of God’ that beckons me with an allure that I can’t match in the following.
I would love to chew the fat with you about the big questions.
With love,
David
This is a contemporary form of the traditional psalm. It begins with the mourning of personal circumstance and the writer’s cry as he yearns for God. It then moves to the recognition that we do encounter God in various ways and often when we least expect, and finally concludes in a prayer of thankfulness for God’s presence, closeness and comfort.
May be so — my ignorance didn’t recognise the template — thanks.Two things impact me. The potency of eloquence and self-declaration is at a level that is sufficiently general to be recognised almost globally. It begs self-reflection on core values. Again, thanks.
Secondly, your having drawn my attention to ‘form’, further highlights both the potency and the sadness of the doublets for me. ‘Potent’ because of the intensity of yearning for intimacy with the divine. ‘Sadly’ because of the duality – the him there, — me here perceptions that minimise the recognition of our ‘true self’ — our divine nature within the unitive ‘Mind of God’: the consciousness that is the ground of all being. I’ve tried to explore the nuts and bolts of this shift in long-winded an earlier post on this website.