Sherry Sterling

Dear friends,

Do you, like me, notice it’s natural to praise God after a win, when things are going your way, when you, like King David, are “granted (your) heart’s desire” (as he writes in one of today’s readings, after a win on the battlefield: Psalm 21: 1-7)? 

It’s so much harder to praise God after a loss, when we aren’t so sure God is with us. Yet loss is exactly the time when we notice what or whom we turn to for comfort or direction.

In another reading for today, Psalm 126, the Psalmist reminds us that, those who sow with tears, will reap with songs of joy, and that our tears, like seeds, multiply into bundles of sustenance we will eventually harvest:

Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.

How do we make the switch, from complaint to praise? From skepticism to knowing? 

I find it’s faith that bridges that gap.

Not a rehearsed faith, pulled out like a blanket laid over the top of suffering. Difficulty is the time faith happens in action, in the down-in-the-trenches decision to turn toward God for comfort, even when it seems God is absent. 

Sometimes it’s in praying for the faith to take that action, praying for help to do the turning towards God. 

In these times, I yield my will, to practice, yet again, “Thy will be done.” Turning from the instinctive curling in, in protection of my hurt—to a turning out, opening my heart, turning toward God to let the light of God dry the tears on my cheeks. And I find the weight of my heart is lifted up.

That is faith in action.

That is letting tears be transformed into songs of joy, letting seeds of sorrow be sown, and allowing them, in time, to bring a harvest of sustenance. A miracle from Our Daily Bread. One day at a time.

Peace and love,

—Sherry