the song, day 1

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 100

Scripture 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 written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song 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)