Friday morning I was playing a contemporary Christian music playlist on my phone (thanks Amazon music!) as I got up and got ready for work. A 2016 Casting Crowns song, “Oh my soul” started and I had to stop shaving to listen.
I’m back on the road again, away from family. My Dad is in the hospital for a triple bypass after learning he has diabetes and congestive heart failure (and I wasn’t there). A dear friend’s mother nears the end of her time with cancer and she is the very picture of God’s love. In the midst of all this, I’ve lost some of the spiritual support that’s been so important to me. I needed this song.

“Oh, my soul

You are not alone

There’s a place where fear has to face the God you know

One more day, He will make a way

Let Him show you how, you can lay this down

‘Cause you’re not alone”

Here and now

You can be honest

I won’t try to promise that someday it all works out

‘Cause this is the valley

And even now, He is breathing on your dry bones

And there will be dancing

There will be beauty where beauty was ash and stone

This much I know”

This song finds me at a time when I am trying to practice mindfulness – to stay in the present moment. When I catch myself pulled to worry, to jump back into the past or project some imagined potential disaster into the future, I draw a quick breath and return to the present. The precious present – this one moment God gives us. That’s the moment when my fear faces the God I know. That breath I draw is the Spirit – filling me, God with me, right here, right now. And at that very moment there is beauty, there is peace, there is love, in that one moment in the Kingdom of God.

Read Psalm 42, as the God who loves you unconditionally meets you in each moment – in the valley or on the mountaintop. And know that as I breathe in the Spirit, I love you too.
Mike

Today’s Reading: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+42&version=NRSV

You can hear, “O my soul” and read the lyrics here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn5aq54yu8A