The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
-Frederick Buechner
My mind is blank. My soul asleep.
But I must praise God still.
Triumphant and glorious, transcendent and eternal.
A perfect mind and soul and will.
Unsurprised by calamity, unhurried by urgency.
Above all yet not unmoved.
I wish to attain the incarnate equilibrium
that can abide in heaven while surrounded by destruction.
God, save me from this deadening torpor,
This half-life that quickens only for pleasure.
Awaken me to the fullness of being human and yet divine.
Inhabit me wholly as a royal in exile.
Make me your royal priest in the presence of poverty.
Not a victim but a victor who sees and feels and loves.
Thanks to Kathy Hanson for tracking down the source of the opening quote.
Your last lines, “Make me your royal priest in the presence of poverty.
Not a victim but a victor who sees and feels and loves.” should be our daily mantra. As we dwell on who we serve, and who is on our side, the cares and poverty of this world, be they physical as you experience in Africa or spiritual as we experience in the western world should not get us down. God wants us to be victors and we will be in the end. Let’s not let our worldly circumstances get us down.
I’ve read this psalm several times today, letting it inhabit me. Thank you. I hope no one would consider it blasphemous if I said it is as inspired as anything David wrote.
David did write it!
Inspired more by the immensity of the world’s suffering and my own tendency to just not care.
Well, David, I’m a little slow, but I woke up at 4:30 a.m.laughing when I finally understood this irony. I think of you more often in terms of Lingamish than David Ker.