Sabbath Thought: The Lifted Heart

© A.Rutherford

In the sharing of one’s pilgrimage, there will naturally be times when the path winds through a valley.  In reality, most of life is not lived on the mountain top.   In dark times, it is not realistic to expect that what normally makes us happy, as the world counts happiness, will counteract a heaviness of spirit.  In weeks like this past one, in which there have been struggles with critical illness of two family members, the small joys are of special benefit and blessing.   These are the times when only an abiding spiritual joy will sustain us.  However, human that we are, if we do not take care, our resources can become depleted.  Therefore, it’s important to take opportunity  for small “refills” of joy.  We must remember that God certainly knows what we are made of.  He bears in mind that we are dust (Psalm 103:14).   This is the time to pay attention to the God-gifts sent to refresh your spirit.  

A poem by Sara Teasdale illustrates this well—

      Wood Song

I heard a wood thrush in the dusk

 Twirl three notes and make a star—

My heart that walked with bitterness

 Came back from very far.

Three shining notes were all he had,

 And yet they made a starry call—

I caught life back against my breast 

 And kissed it, scars and all.

Elizabeth Gray Vining: 
Once when for long months sorrow had clamped tight my heart, it was a minor ecstasy that showed me that life might again hold joy for me.  I woke in the morning to the sound, I thought, of rain on the porch roof, but when I opened my eyes I saw that it was not raindrops making that soft and playful patter but locust blossoms falling from the tree above.  For a fleeting second my cramped and stiff heart knew again the happiness that is of the universe and not of itself and its possessions, and like Sara Teasdale, when in similar circumstances she heard the wood thrush through the dusk, "I snatched life back against my breast, and kissed it, scars and all.”  

. . .

 There have been countless others down the years: crape myrtle flashing through the slanting silver of a sudden southern downpour;  the flute passages in Beethoven's Fourth Symphony; the cold curve of the river in winter where it turns between purple wooded banks; shared laughter over nothing more than fundamental understanding; the call of a cuckoo above the peat bogs in Skye; the whistle of a cardinal in the dark of a suburban February morning; the smell of wet wood and seaweed at a ferry wharf; the fragrance of sunwarmed honey suckle on stone walls."   

Dietrich Bonhoeffer bears witness to this need to pay attention to small gifts of joy even amidst great suffering as he faced death in the concentration camp:

"Spring is really coming now . . . . Here in the prison yard there is a thrush which sings beautifully in the morning, and now in the evening too.  One is grateful for little things, and that is surely a gain."  - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"When you bathe, when you eat, when you walk, when you sleep--these are great symbols and are holy . . . Have more joy in your daily life . . . have greater joy, but be sure the Source of it is within rather than without--and, lest you be misled, that simply means to be more aware of God whom you worship while you play [and when you walk through the valley], for God abides in the lifted heart." - Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood

Look for the "Grace notes," the signs of His Presence, for “God abides in the lifted heart.”