Morning Mystery

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. (Psalm 90:14)

Morning Mystery

Hands in the sink, immersed, the water hot, dishes from last night and morning’s breakfast. First, the small plates, the cup from which I drank tea, three coffee cups, a glass, a few forks, the knife bearing a trace of peanut butter, the spoon with which I ate oatmeal.

Each washed in the warmth embracing my hands, lifted from one sink to the next, there to be rinsed in water hot from the tap, soap draining off each one until the clear glass bowls glisten wet, ready for the white towel.

Out the window, a flash of red splits the dense, January gray, and perches on the birch, a woodpecker? What are you doing here? Don’t you have someplace warmer to be?

Back to the bowls, the small plates, the cups, each rubbed dry and stacked atop their fellows in the cupboards.

But what is this within? From where does it come?

Amid mundane repetitive motions, daily chore becomes prayer; wordless but undeniable love awakens within and warms body and soul … even more than the water that is grace and balm on winter hands.

A simple task, the mind barely engaged, becomes prayer in itself, love filling the heart and speaking a deep, silent thank you for one’s life.

Neither heart nor mind summoned this moment. It just is. It just comes, unbidden—this Heart deeper than my own filling every inward space, this Love who invites me to love it all, the whole mysterious mess of living, knowing at the heart of it … and at the heart of the mystery that is myself … lives this Mystery.

A holy gift, all of it. Everything. Thank you.

 Pr. David L. Miller