Come to
Stillness:
Take a few
minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before
God.
Opening Prayer:
O Lord, as we spend time with you and your Word
this day, let us hear the words of your Ancient Song; and let us listen closely
for the Song of God that rises in our hearts.
In Christ. Amen. (JLB)
Psalm
for the Week: Psalm
100Scripture for the Day:
Song of Songs 2:10:13
Reading for
Reflection:
In
the darkness something was happening at last.
A voice had begun to sing. It was
very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was
coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from
all directions at once. Sometimes he
almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes
were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most
beautiful noise he had ever heard. It
was so beautiful he could hardly bear it.
The horse seemed to like it too; he gave the sort of whinny a horse
would give if, after years of being a cab-horse, it found itself back in the
old field where it had played as a foal, and saw someone whom it remembered and
loved coming across the field to bring it a lump of sugar.
“Gawd!” said Cabby. “Ain’t it lovely?”
Then two wonders happened at the same
moment. One was that the voice was
suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher
up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices.
The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was
blazing with stars. They didn’t come out
gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but
darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out—single
stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our
world. There were no clouds. The new stars and new voices began at exactly
the same time. If you had seen and heard
it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars
themselves who were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one,
which had made them appear and made them sing.
“Glory be!” said Cabby. “I’d ha’ been a better man all my life if I’d
known there were things like this.”
The Voice on the earth was now louder and
more triumphant; but the voices in the sky, after singing loudly with it for a
time, began to get fainter. And now
something else was happening.
Far away, and down near the horizon, the
sky began to turn grey. A light wind,
very fresh, began to stir. The sky, in
that one place, grew slowly and steadily paler.
You could see shapes of hills standing up dark against it. All the time the Voice went on singing.
There was soon enough light for them to
see one another’s faces. The Cabby and
the two children had open mouths and shining eyes; they were drinking in the
sound, and they looked as if it reminded them of something. Uncle Andrew’s mouth was open too, but not
open with joy. He looked more as if his
chin had simply dropped away from the rest of his face. His shoulders were stooped and his knees
shook. He was not liking the Voice. If he could have got away from it by creeping
into a rat’s hole, he would have done so.
But the Witch looked as if, in a way, she understood the music better
than any of them. Her mouth was shut,
her lips were pressed together, and her fists were clenched. Ever since the song began she had felt that
this whole world was filled with Magic different from hers and stronger. She hated it.
She would have smashed that whole world, or all worlds, to pieces, if it
would only stop the singing. The horse
stood with its ears well forward, and twitching. Every now and then it snorted and stamped the
ground. It no longer looked like a tired
old cabhorse; you could now well believe that its father had been in battles.
The eastern sky changed from white to pink
and from pink to gold. The Voice rose
and rose, till all the air was shaking with it.
And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had
yet produced, the sun arose.
Digory had never seen such a sun. The sun above the ruins of Charn had looked
older than ours; this looked younger.
You could imagine that it laughed for joy as it came up. And as its beams shot across the land the
travelers could see for the first time what sort of place they were in. It was a valley through which a broad, swift
river wound its way, flowing eastward towards the sun. Southward there were mountains, northward
there were lower hills. But it was a
valley of mere earth, rock and water; there was not a tree, not a bush, not a
blade of grass to be seen. The earth was
of many colours: they were fresh, hot and vivid. They made you feel excited; until you saw the
Singer himself, and then you forgot everything else.
It was a
Lion. Huge, shaggy, and bright it stood
facing the risen sun. Its mouth was wide
open in song and it was about three hundred yards away. (The Magician’s Nephew by
C. S. Lewis)
Reflection and
Listening: silent and writtenPrayer:
for the church, for others, for
myselfSong for the Week: Thy Mercy, My
God
Thy
mercy, my God, is the theme of my song,
The joy of my heart. and the boast of my tongue;
Thy free grace alone, from the first to the last,
Hath won my affections, and bound my soul fast.
Without
Thy sweet mercy I could not live here;
Sin would reduce me to utter despair;
But, through Thy free goodness, my spirits revive,
And He that first made me still keeps me alive.
Thy
mercy is more than a match for my heart,
Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart;
Dissolved by Thy goodness, I fall to the ground,
And weep to the praise of the mercy I’ve found.
Great Father of mercies, Thy goodness I own,
And the covenant love of Thy crucified Son;
All praise to the Spirit, Whose whisper divine
Seals mercy, and pardon, and righteousness mine.
All praise to the Spirit, Whose whisper divine
Seals mercy, and pardon, and righteousness mine.
Closing
Prayer
Everything in all of creation, O Lord, is a
unique song of yours. And when we sing
our song—that song that is buried deeply within each of us—we are indeed being
who we were made to be. We are in
harmony (shalom) with the voice of
our Maker. Help us to sing our song
(Your song) clearly and fully this day.
In the name of Jesus. Amen. (JLB)
