# Groaning Day 6 > Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God. ### Opening Prayer: *Lord, I was ever greedy of life, my attention always straining toward the parts of it that had not yet come…toward what was about to be, or might be, or hopefully would be, and especially toward those things that, by Your mercy, might turn out not to be after all.* *I panted with longing to suck each segment of life dry of its pleasures. I plotted, with myself but despite myself, about tomorrow…about the “later” that was constantly morphing into now. You know how I worked, Lord, recklessly but prayerfully, to set time’s courses and, in Your name, to sculpt them to my intention, to my definition of good.* *But I am old now, Lord, and my prayers grown old as well. So it is that daily I am drawn, as here, to pray, “Deliver me, My Lord, from this my great sin, and take me, free of doubt and other longings, into Your good plan.” (Prayer by Phyllis Tickle, Weavings, Volume XXV, Number 4)* #### Psalm for the Week: Psalm 31 #### Into Your Hand I Commit My Spirit #### To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. *31 In you, O Lord, do I take refuge;let me never be put to shame;in your righteousness deliver me!* *2 Incline your ear to me;rescue me speedily!Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me!3 For you are my rock and my fortress; and for your name's sake you lead me and guide me;4 you take me out of the net they have hidden for me, for you are my refuge.5 Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.6 I hate[a] those who pay regard to worthless idols,but I trust in the Lord.7 I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love,because you have seen my affliction;you have known the distress of my soul,8 and you have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy;you have set my feet in a broad place.9 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief my soul and my body also.10 For my life is spent with sorrow,and my years with sighing;my strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away.* *11 Because of all my adversaries I have become a reproach,especially to my neighbors,and an object of dread to my acquaintances;those who see me in the street flee from me.12 I have been forgotten like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel.13 For I hear the whispering of many—terror on every side!—as they scheme together against me,as they plot to take my life.* *14 But I trust in you, O Lord;I say, “You are my God.”15 My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!16 Make your face shine on your servant; save me in your steadfast love!17 O Lord, let me not be put to shame, for I call upon you;let the wicked be put to shame; let them go silently to Sheol.18 Let the lying lips be mute, which speak insolently against the righteous in pride and contempt.* *19 Oh, how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear youand worked for those who take refuge in you,in the sight of the children of mankind!20 In the cover of your presence you hide them from the plots of men;you store them in your shelter from the strife of tongues.* *21 Blessed be the Lord, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to mewhen I was in a besieged city.22 I had said in my alarm,[b]“I am cut off from your sight.”But you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help.* *23 Love the Lord, all you his saints!The Lord preserves the faithful but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride.24 Be strong, and let your heart take courage,* *all you who wait for the Lord!* #### Scripture for the Day: 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 *7 So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations,[a] a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.* #### Reading for Reflection: *This is what I’ve been thinking: I contain pain. It means several things.* *The first point: it’s all within me. Contained inside of me. There are no external symptoms. (Except for its effect on my ambulation. I am mightily slowed down.) If I wish to discuss it (as here) people have to take my word for it. And even then I am not sure I can communicate its quality, its intensity, its free motion through my skeleton and musculature. (Hence the exercise through several paragraphs above.)* *Now I would have thought that such enclosedness of pain would make me the Lonely Hurter. Bearing the burden all lonesomely, you see. (Well, so it was at the beginning of my diagnosis, when people scarcely knew how to react.) It should, I thought, grant me some sort of Byronic romanticism: “For I am as a weed, / Flung from the rock, on Ocean’s foam to sail / Where’er the surge may sweep, the tempest’s breath prevail”—poor, forsaken, solitary poet! I, in my vale of pain, enduring the greatest limitation imposed upon sentient and singular lives—this, that each must die alone.* *Ah, what ineffable tragedy, to suffer alone. Unaccompanied!* *Yet, no matter how often in the past I’ve permitted myself to sink in to such delicious self-pity, none of this has been my response to this pain. I’m surprised at myself.* *For this is the second point: I find myself consumed by a truly interesting question. Why doesn’t the pain which I am forced to contain—yes, essentially alone—increase my reclusive gloom, my characteristic tendencies to melancholy? What allows me, rather, to respond with a measuring scrutiny, with a certain impersonal dissociation from this world of hurt inside my body—and with spiritual comfort after all?* *Groaning helps. I recommend it. Seriously.* *Transforming the pain into complete sentences, ordering it according to linguistic principles uttered aloud—especially when someone is there to listen, however little her comprehension, and especially while the pain is active—that helps. I am fortunate. Thanne is patient, nor does she think I’m begging sympathy.* *I believe this: speak a thing, and that thing is forced to be conformed to the speaker’s structures, language, grammar, weltanschauung. Authority. Even from primeval times, to know the name of something is to command it.* *On the other hand, altruism is not my consolation. I do not draw comfort or strength from supposing that my pain serves anyone else, or else some cause beyond myself. This is not a sacrifice. I cannot come close to deeds in the imitation of Christ. (I have lived in the hope of such sacrifice and such imitatio Christi.) This just doesn’t happen to be that or to explain my genuine freedom from pain while I am in pain.* *The third point: perhaps the journey itself has brought me—my soul and my quieter contemplations—to matters less selfish and more eternal. Matters in themselves larger than pain, larger than myself yet capable of, inviting me into their elevated community: a lifting of self out of self. (Letters From the Land of Cancer by Walter Wangerin Jr.)* #### Reflection and Listening: silent and written #### Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself #### Song for the Week: O Heart Bereaved and Lonely *O heart bereaved and lonely,* *Whose brightest dreams have fled* *Whose hopes like summer roses,* *Are withered crushed and dead* *Though link by link be broken,* *And tears unseen may fall* *Look up amid thy sorrow,* *To Him who knows it all* *O cling to thy Redeemer,* *Thy Savior, Brother, Friend* *Believe and trust His promise,* *To keep you till the end* *O watch and wait with patience,* *And question all you will* *His arms of love and mercy,* *Are round about thee still* *Look up, the clouds are breaking,* *The storm will soon be o'er* *And thou shall reach the haven,* *Where sorrows are no more* *Look up, be not discouraged;* *Trust on, whate'er befall* *Remember, O remember,* *Thy Savior knows it all* ### Closing Prayer *Loving God, the earth moans, in need of your healing. Help me be a peacemaker today—one who carries your vision and takes the small actions that contribute to healing for the world. Amen. (The Uncluttered Heart by Beth A. Richardson)*