Land of silence

This morning I read…

If the LORD had not been my help,
my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.
When I thought, “My foot is slipping,”
your steadfast love, O LORD, held me up.
When the cares of my heart are many,
your consolations cheer my soul. (Ps 94)

But LORD how does this work for Brian? How can you remove the slick black emotional tumour stuck fast within his ribcage?

Will you run these words about steadfast-love through a fine glass tube and inject them straight into that heavy mass? And will they kill the all those cagey cells and melt the growth?

He’s lived with that swelling for so long and the street has stitched it so tight to his organs so that it’s hard to know where his heart leaves off and the malignancy begins.

And yet, when I talk to him he sees a kind of hope in the day, and we agree that in every physical and natural way, it’s a beautiful morning. And it’s almost as though I need this hope of his for himself more than he does.

I sometimes fear that if Brian losses all hope I’ll lose my faith. Almost as if he’s my anchor to sanity today? 

Your words…can they break curses and hold us all up? We need you Lord…need your your present moment, your eternity–need your ground, your earthness, your hereness–need to look back to you and forward to you. But you’re so silent.