Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
This morning, I’m sitting on a very humid, very lovely porch of a short term rental in Pittsburgh. There are loads of song birds, and some bird that’s whoo whoo whoo-ing. We awoke to thunderbolts and lightening (not very very frightening). Yesterday, was a long travel day to get from Portland to Pittsburgh. Every time I go ‘back east’, I’m reminded how far the west coast is from virtually everything. Even using the term ‘back east’ is indicative of the west coast’s distance. People use the term ‘back east’ to refer to anything east of say, Colorado. In any case, it was an early morning flight, a layover in Seattle, and a long flight from Seattle to Pittsburgh. We’ve come for a long weekend away, and to visit dear friends who were going to Pittsburgh for the weekend. I’m loving the warm, muggy morning. It’s reminiscent of growing up in Chicago, after 30+ years in the incredibly moderate and not humid Northwest. Today, we’ll go get pierogis with our friends, and maybe catch a baseball game. It’s nice.
This morning, I’m thinking about seeing things in new ways, and then bringing back that new perspective back to the old ways.
This sentence, ‘Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you’, is a sentence I think I first recalled hearing after I’d started my discernment to get ordained. Once you contemplate some change like that, you start noticing things you hadn’t noticed. This was a sentence many preachers prayed immediately before starting their sermon. I doubt it really started the early 2000’s, but that’s when I first noticed it, because I was noticing what preachers did with a new eye. Hmm. Why are they doing that? Do I want to do that?
Today, when I came upon those words in Psalm 19, I was again startled. When a phrase from scripture becomes something that is memorized and recited without the scriptural citation, it’s a meaningful and yet untethered phrase. For as often as I pray the Lord’s prayer, I’m always a little startled to read the words from Jesus, ‘and when you pray to your father, pray like this – Our Father in heaven..” Of course the words come from some scripture, and when I stumble upon something familiar, it brings that scriptural grounding back into my prayers. May the words of my mouth….
So with this little phrase, it burst on the scene for me in the 2000’s, and I’ve put it neatly in the category of things that preachers say out loud or pray in their hearts, before sermons. And today reading that phrase on a porch on the other side of the US, I realize that category is way too small. Yes, it’s important to pray that God’s in my words and heart before I preach, but it’s also important that God’s in my words and heart before I open my mouth – ever.
To be clear, I’m grateful I have a toolbox for preaching. Without it, and without sticking this phrase in it, I probably would have skimmed over those lines amidst all of the laments and petitions from this section of Psalms.
I want to take that prayer out of its tool box and invite it into my every morning, every time I open my mouth, every time I take a walk to pray, or lay down and get wrapped around the axel of my own chattering brain.
Likewise, I want to take this relaxed vacation morning, sitting on the porch in the dripping humid weather, back to my regular life. I don’t need to hurry up and do anything. Categories and toolboxes and habits are wonderful to create some sense of order in our brain and lives. And occasionally, we need to reevaluate it all to make sure it still makes sense.
So today, as I make breakfast and visit with friends, let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
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