And I say, “O that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest
This section of psalms is full of treachery and betrayal, and the psalmist is going between petitioning God for protection, to asking God to take care of his enemies. It’s unclear to me whether a prayer to smite someone else is an effective use of prayer time, as I’m thinking God loves even those I’d like to smite. Since I believe that to my core, I’m hesitant to pray about anyone else’s evil deeds. God loves that other person too, so I’m pretty sure smiting is out of the question. That’s what I mean by not being an effective prayer.
But it is a true sentiment, and God wants to hear those, even if they aren’t necessarily congruous with God’s vision of that other person, or of the situation. And so we pray, and grouse, and lament, and ask for smiting, because God wants to hear, and we need to express those human attitudes.
In the midst of the grousing, the psalmist expresses an equally human desire to flee. O, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. This absolutely resonates with me today. Even without the busyness of a day-job, I still feel like I need more rest. I suspect that we all need rest from the life we live. We work hard and many hours, we tend our loved ones and our homes, we try to relax, and then we finally fall into bed. I suspect that our rest is insufficient in both quality and quantity. If we all had the opportunity to not work for an extended time, or to fly away and be genuinely at rest, we’d realize that we were tired, more tired than we knew and more than we acknowledged.
Since I don’t have wings, and I can’t really fly away to be at rest, how can I find that rest? How can I hold on to this sense of rest I’ve found from my unanticipated free time, once my days are filled again? How can we all find rest, in the midst of our busy, scheduled, structured, frenetic days?
I think some of that rest can come from more forced down time. It could be a hard sabbath we practice, with no work, no electronics, no duties. It could be weekends that are structured to have less structure. Maybe add blocks of time to go for a walk with no destination, or no step count. Or a bike ride to nowhere in particular. Or silence. Or maybe it’s a vacation where we really recreate. Maybe it’s a weekend in bed, dreaming, or thinking, or drawing. My challenge is that sometimes resting looks like wasting time. Mindlessly scrolling online. I’m not busy doing something else, but neither do I feel rested when I’m done. When I’m doing it, it feels like I’m resting, because I’m not ‘working’. But it’s not restful in the least. Note to self, try to skip mindless scrolling and see I feel more rested.
This morning, I’m thinking about how to find that sense of rest in my day.
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