Prayer is our daily gathering. It is where we meet Him. Like the woman at the well, we can only offer our empty cup and humbly ask " Give me some of this living water Lord".
I bring the children and we meet with Him in this ordinary place of "spirit and truth" somewhere between both the mountain and the temple. A small, simple wellspring from which to drink, in the middle of a busy day.
I bring the children to the source and we stop, we bring the water to our mouths, sometimes our own tears stream too. And the sweetness dilutes till the saline quenches and it feel like forgivness.
Suddenly we are the same, nothing more or less than a child of God. Both them and I.
And all those further out.
The borders to this place are not closed. They touch the ends of the earth. They embrace all they touch.
Prayer is a leveler. On the soil of prayer each of us can only fall to their knees before Him.
There may have been tussles only moments before, an argument, a sore word, discord in a heart. Yet this silence gathers hands, each as empty as the other, cupped and lifted for the water to pour, we are drawn beyond our own horizon lines, our own territories. In this unmarked ground we are His.
Yet takes a small step to make a giant leap.
At times the untidy noise of unwashed dishes rattles in my mind, or I catch myself on the irritation of restless bodies swarming like bees while my mind breezes past the time of an appointment this afternoon, mentally noting how I will fit lunch and naptimes around it's fixed point in the atmosphere of my mind.
And I ask myself, is this what I am orbiting around?
Only the silence of His gaze reorientates me. Changes my possibilities, opens new doors that I had not noticed before.
And on the tips of my outstretched fingers, a warm breath leaves it's vapour.
Like dew.
Manna.
Residues of falling flakes...
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"Live in me, make your home in me."
John 15
Fall
one by one
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"God it seems you've been our home forever; long before the mountains were born,
Long before you brought earth itself to birth,"
Psalm 90
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"Yes, because God's your refuge, the High God your very own home, Evil can't get close to you."
Psalm 91
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"Your beauty and Love chase after me every day of my life. I'm back home, in the house of God, for the rest of my life."
Psalm 23
"There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink."
John 4:7
When we come to draw, He asks, he waits for us and asks.
The cup is a shared one.
Prayer is a gathering at the well.
Neither on the mountain nor the temple but in Spirit and Truth we will meet Him here.
In the silence of prayer we draw from the well.
In the drinking we know we are home.
