Meditation for 1 April 2009
From The Rev. Peter A. Munson
Psalm 130
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
2 Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!
3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
4 But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.
5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope.
6 My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.
7 O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.
8 It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.
Waiting for the Lord with Discipline
There was one time in my life when I worked the "graveyard" shift. It was the summer of 1976. I worked as the night auditor at the historic Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. My most memorable night of that summer was definitely July 31. That was the day of the Big Thompson Flood. I was checking in stranded people at all hours of the night. That summer I worked ten nights in a row, then had four days off. It seemed that my body never adjusted to that routine. I was always trying to figure out when to sleep. There is one other thing I remember, though, about that summer. It was good to have work to do, because if I didn't, I would wait - in agony - for the hours to pass and for the sun to come up. Some nights I got my required work done by 4 a.m. or so, and then I would just wait to be of assistance to some late-night carouser or to some person who was checking out early in the morning. The time actually went a lot faster when my work took me all the way until 7 a.m.
Sometimes when we face challenging times in our personal lives, we want a word of guidance from the Lord. But the problem is often found in the waiting! We are not always the most patient people when it comes to waiting. We can be tempted to take matters into our own hands. "Oh, I'm not hearing anything from God, so I will just plunge in and do ___________" - and we do the first thing that comes to mind. And that strategy doesn't always end up being the best thing for us or for anyone else.
It's sort of like being a night auditor. We need some way to keep ourselves occupied while we wait. What we need is some discipline that will see us through. Then our waiting can become an active waiting, and not a passive waiting. It is passive waiting that drives most of us crazy, I think.
There is a long-standing tradition in the Episcopal Church known as the Daily Office. It goes back to the routine set up centuries and centuries ago by monks and nuns to "pray the hours" - to pray at different times throughout the day. I'm sure you are well aware that Muslims are supposed to face toward Mecca and pray five times a day. That is one of the most basic identifying characteristics of a Muslim - this particular discipline. You stop whatever you are doing at the appointed time and pray. In our Prayer Book, there is a similar discipline that any of us can adopt. We have four identified times for prayer - Morning Prayer (BCP, p. 37 or 75), Noonday Prayer (BCP, p. 103), Evening Prayer (BCP, p.61 or 115), and Compline (BCP, p. 127). Compline might be called "Going-to-Bed" or "End-of-Day" Prayer. Each of these services is made up of Bible readings, including the Psalms, and if you prayed all four of them, you would also read a Collect for the Day, the Confession, the Apostles' Creed, and the Lord's Prayer (all found in both Morning and Evening Prayer). We can and do pray these services together, as a faith community gathered for common prayer. ("common" here, as in "The Book of Common Prayer", meaning "community") But they can also be prayed by an individual. Praying the Office also gets you into the discipline of reading and reflecting on the Bible each day, as each day has lessons for the day that come from the "Daily Office Lectionary" (BCP, p. 934)
To engage in a discipline such as this would be to engage in a process of actively waiting for the Lord. You don't have to start with all four times of prayer. You could start with one or two, and even do a modified version of one of them (for example, you don't have to read all the Bible lessons for each day). (In case you have wondered, I write these weekly meditations based on one of the Bible lessons for Morning Prayer on that particular day.) Sometime later this year, I will be offering a class at St. Ambrose on the Daily Office. It is a rich resource within our tradition, one which identifies us as Episcopalians, and one in which all of us can benefit from knowing and practicing.
So... the next time you are waiting to hear a word of hope (Psalm 130:5) from the Lord, perhaps you can trust in the fact that if you wait with discipline... that is, if you incorporate regular times of prayer and Bible reading into your waiting, you will hear a word from the Lord. For our Lord is faithful and forgiving and abounds in steadfast love (see verses 2, 4, and 6, above), and He often speaks to us through the Spirit, as we pray and as we read and reflect on Holy Scripture. Praying and reading scripture in a disciplined fashion is like being a night auditor or a night watchman who has enough work to do. Before you know it, the day has dawned, and another shift of work had ended. Before you know it, you have heard a word from the Lord - a word that can guide you in the way that you should go.
"I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem." (Psalm 130:5-7)
By the way, in the summer of 1977 I began working at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, the first of four summers that I worked at the Y. And to this day, I have never worked another graveyard shift. But I sure have a healthy respect for those who do!