Better Promises

I reached, this disheveled morning, for a book which has become a friend to me and read a line that brightened my dimmed spirits. Darkness was the topic of the paragraph before and more particularly our fear of it and what to do to combat it...

...we rush around trying to light candles. Some are real: books are candles for me; so is music; so is friendship.

This morning my candles involve things familiar because the unknown hovers heavy. I went to sleep late last night comforting myself with thoughts of anything tried and true, old and reliable. Things that whispered promises of steadiness: cereal, laundry, sleepy children, old books, banana bread, flannel. I turned to an amusing book of essays and read, grinning, until sleep eventually took me away from the reality that would greet me when I awoke.

Waking, I still crave that which will be gentle to my skittish soul. If it had been laundered, I'd have chosen to wear a comfy gray shirt. Though made exactly like the green one I donned, the gray shirt just because it is gray is softer, soothing. My heavy coffee cup greeted me in the kitchen like an old friend on a cold morning and the smell of coffee brewing helped to shore up my resolve not to wallow.

Drama, on days like today, is an understandable fallback position as is looming fear, but I don't want either to be mine. I don't want to be one of those who scream with vitriolic bitterness, though perhaps that would provide temporary relief. I'm attempting instead, to walk determinately, if softly, in the other direction because today my hope has a headache and my reality suffers indigestion. Just for today I'll live in this bubble where I don't feel like a foreigner in my homeland, or like one who suddenly discovers that the joke is on her.

A friend predicted that the sun would still come out today and it did, so there's that. I'm fairly certain that it'll come out again tomorrow when I'll be stepping out of my bubble and into the murky future with all that it is sure to hold and it will be better than yesterday which kind of felt like a child's Christmas morning where all of the expected gifts were instead lists of chores to be done.

In the dimness of this morning I also grabbed hold of the surest, steadiest thing I know, the Word which  said,

"but now Jesus our High Priest, has been given a ministry that is far superior to the old priesthood, for He is the one who mediates for us a far better covenant with God, based on better promises." Hebrews 8:6

A better covenant based upon better promises and not just any old covenant and not from man. God has better promises for us and when my bruised psyche heals a little and my bleary eyes clear a bit I'll revel in those better promises and I'll place my hope in that far better covenant because nothing less than that is worthy of my hope anyway.

Until then, there's chili for lunch, warm towels in the dryer, and a little girl (who last night dreamt of snakes in her bed) napping soundly on her daddy's pillow.

*The line quoted above is from the book A Circle of Quiet by Madeline L'Engle.