Mtr Taylor Devine

Dear friend,

The Psalmist today is seeking Solace. Some Psalms have a sense of resolution, a diving deep into sorrow, and being brought back out into light through God's mercy. This one does not. It plunges into despondency and does not give a ladder or a hand-hold to help with a climb back out. It ends with the teary "My friend and my neighbor you have put away from me, and darkness is my only companion."

In this season when we are praying with "Go," being equipped and sent, I hear a different kind of "Go," not us going, driving with energy and hope, but God going, wherever we are: deep in the pit, climbing out, falling back in again.

The Psalms and early writings in our Scriptures are characterized by some strong themes, patterns, and assumptions, one of them being a series of  Covenants between God and God's people. Echoes of "I will give you" in today's Gospel sound like God's call to Abram, "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Covenant is central in the Book of Ruth, 
“Do not press me to leave you
    or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
    where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
    and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die—
    there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
    and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!”

And Covenant sounds like "I will, with God's help," the promise we reaffirm at Baptisms.

The Covenant that is Jesus' self promises God-with-us, Emmanuel. With us in grief and trouble, he goes. The Psalmist's cry for solace yearns for God's presence. May the blessings of solace in the midst of trouble remind us of God's abiding presence with us.

In Christ,
Mtr Taylor
 

If you would like some more reading and praying with solace: 
Solace Blessing

That’s it.
That’s all this blessing
knows how to do:

Shine your shoes.
Fill your refrigerator.
Water your plants.
Make some soup.

All the things
you cannot think
to do yourself
when the world
has come apart,
when nothing
will be normal
again.

Somehow
this blessing knows
precisely what you need,
even before
you know.

It sees what will bring
the deepest solace
for you.
It senses what will offer
the kindest grace.

And so it will step
with such quietness
into the ordinary moments
where the absence
is the deepest.

It will enter
with such tenderness
into the hours
where the sorrow
is most keen.

You do not even
have to ask.

Just leave it open—
your door,
your heart,
your day
in every aching moment
it holds.

See what solace
spills through the gaps
your sorrow has torn.

See what comfort
comes to visit,
holding out its gifts
in each compassionate hand.

—Jan Richardson
from The Cure for Sorrow, 2016