# Between day 3 > Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God. ### Opening Prayer: *O Lord, our God, so much of this life is lived in between; between the now and the not yet, between arriving and departing, between birth and death and rebirth, between growing up and growing old, between questions and answers. Help us not to live only for some distant day when the in between will be no more, but help us to step into the mystery of that sacred space here and now—knowing that it will be a place of genuine change and true transformation. (JLB)* #### Psalm for the Week: Psalm 46 #### God Is Our Fortress #### To the choirmaster. Of the Sons of Korah. According to Alamoth.[a] A Song. *46 God is our refuge and strength, a very present[b] help in trouble. 2 Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,3 though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.5 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;God will help her when morning dawns.6 The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.7 The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah8 Come, behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth.9 He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire.10 “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”11 The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah* #### Scripture for the Day: Psalm 71:1-24 #### Forsake Me Not When My Strength Is Spent *71 In you, O Lord, do I take refuge;let me never be put to shame!2 In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me;incline your ear to me, and save me!3 Be to me a rock of refuge, to which I may continually come;you have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.* *4 Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man.5 For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.6 Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother's womb. My praise is continually of you.7 I have been as a portent to many, but you are my strong refuge.8 My mouth is filled with your praise,and with your glory all the day.* *9 Do not cast me off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength is spent.10 For my enemies speak concerning me; those who watch for my life consult together11 and say, “God has forsaken him; pursue and seize him,for there is none to deliver him.”* *12 O God, be not far from me; O my God, make haste to help me!13 May my accusers be put to shame and consumed; with scorn and disgrace may they be covered who seek my hurt.14 But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more.15 My mouth will tell of your righteous acts,of your deeds of salvation all the day, for their number is past my knowledge.16 With the mighty deeds of the Lord God I will come; I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone.* *17 O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.18 So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me,until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.19 Your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God, who is like you?20 You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again;from the depths ofthe earth you will bring me up again.21 You will increase my greatness and comfort me again.* *22 I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, O my God;I will sing praises to you with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel.23 My lips will shout for joy, when I sing praises to you; my soul also, which you have redeemed.24 And my tongue will talk of your righteous help all the day long,* *for they have been put to shame and disappointed who sought to do me hurt.* #### Reading for Reflection: *Why didn’t God just keep us, instead of sending us here to wander through all of this stuff we call our lives? Would God really run the risk of some of us not making it home again? What is the object of the exercise here, and what are our lives about? Selfish creature that I am, what am I supposed to be about while I am here?* *“I don’t know even now what it was that I was waiting to see,” says a character in one of Eudora Welty’s stories, “but in those days I was convinced that I saw it at almost every turn.” I too have been looking, waiting all my life to see something I am not sure I will recognize, but know for certain is there. “You are traveling a new road with which you are very familiar,” a friend once said to me at a critical juncture in my life.* *I need to see why it is that we are here to see anything at all. I have caught only fleeting glimpses of it from time to time—as through a glass darkly, one might say—no matter how fiercely I watch. I hear a rustling behind me or a whisper on the wind, detect a smile or a gesture between friends or lovers or strangers, touch a stone or a blossom or the hand of my children—and it is there. I watch and listen with a fierceness reserved only for this search.* *When I was younger, I worried a good deal about whether or not I was going to make it home to God. I was never quite convinced that those who interpreted the Story in the way that the trap-the-teacher man did were right, but I met enough of them to be more than a little afraid.* *What I fear now is that I will somehow miss what it is that I am supposed to learn here, something important enough that the Dreamer dispatched me, and the rest of us, here to learn. What I fear now is that I will somehow miss the point of living here at all, living here between the dreaming and the coming true. (Between the Dreaming and the Coming True by Robert Benson)* #### Reflection and Listening: silent and written #### Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself #### Song for the Week: Cleft of the Mountain *I will run to the cleft of the mountain and wait for You* *Will you come and meet with me?* *I will wait in the cleft of the mountain for You to pass by* *Will you come and meet with me?* *Oh, what a joy it would be* *Just for a moment to lay at the feet of the Lord* *Oh more than anything that’s what I long for* *Oh, what a change it would bring* *Just to look deep in the face of the King Who gave all* *You gave everything so You could meet with me* *Will You meet with me?* ### Closing Prayer: *Lord Jesus, Help me to trust you fully in the midst of this life that seems so chaotic and unsure at times. Give me, this day, a firm place to set my feet as I walk toward you through this ever-changing world. Amen. (JLB)*