I Will Lift You Up (Luke 18.9-14)
I am no saint. I am a sinner. But none the more special for that. My prayers come out like gobbledygook, though I sometimes kid myself they are more out there than just the groanings of a human soul, blithering around in the desert of my hopeless mind. These prayers, they are always more for me than for you. And yet you listen.
I am just like a Pharisee. I am pompous and judgemental. I even think sometimes I am glad I am not like him or like her. Sometimes I think I know what is right or what is wrong, for me, or for you, or for the church, for my sister and my brother, child or parent, for the world, for the whale that cries in the sea. I think I can tell even what is needed for each soul to really be free. And I beat on my chest and roar into the wind, Rhyddid! Rhyddid! Rhyddid!*
And then I feel my shame. I am but dust, blowing in the wind, with no direction or plan, loved one moment, despised the next, no way of knowing which the world will make of me today. And I dare not lift my eyes, as I walk through desolate valley, with only my thirst and my hunger to offer in libation for my sins.
I am ragged. I am broken. Stripped. Opening…
Opening my eyes, I can see… springs of living water in the sand. Pools of soul-quenching crystal left by the early rain. There is bread here too. Manna from the table of heaven. And here. Right here in the cracks in the rock of my heart, the most blazing light is breaking through, and a mountain of love is rising between the tectonic plates of what I think I know. And I can hear it. I can hear the voice of ages. The sound of the stars. And it says, “My child, my child, don’t cry. You are me and I am you, and I will lift you up. I will lift you up. I will lift you up.”
*Rhyddid – Welsh ‘freedom’
Tonnau Duw ('God's waves') Fr Tim Ardouin 