Morning Prayer. I am
struck by this petition from Psalm
126:
“Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.”
(Psalm
126:4)
The watercourses in
desert places run with water in their season. This prayer, then, recognises
that life is not about an upward line of ever-increasing fortune—however we
might define that—or even indefinitely continuous good fortune. It recognises,
in the words we use in marriage vows, that there are better times and worse
times, times when we are richer and times when we are poorer, times when we
experience sickness and times when we experience health. It recognises that we
cannot control our lives. It calls on God to restore in due course, perhaps
even acknowledging that such recurring change feels overdue at present; but it
is very different from a sense of entitlement.
Nonetheless, those who lived in the desert carved
out cisterns in which to store water when it did flow. At Masada, for example,
they carved out (by hand) cisterns as large as the nave of a cathedral (see
photos). Blessings can be taken for granted; or, through the sometimes-hard
work of thankfulness, we can create an expansive space in our hearts that
enables those blessings to sustain us when we find ourselves in the worse times*.
*I think the key thing about digging cisterns—which is effort
in response to grace—is that it takes a community, not just an individual or
even a nuclear family.
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