Historical setting: 602 C.E. A cottage in the Vosges
So today Simon and I are sorting through his collection of strangely shaped tree roots, aged and washed in the creek. Which of these elbows of old root is a harp? Some are too fragile, some have too many parts, and some have no place to drill holes for strings.
I show him how I hold my harp and he tries these forms of wood nestled in his arm, on his knee, and with the harp standing on its own as on the bench. He chooses a branch that he can hold close to himself but my concern is that it won’t resonate and be heard. And now it comes to me that he isn’t preparing to perform with this but to simply have some music of his own which was how I coaxed him toward music, and that’s how he received it. He really isn’t a child who would go off slaying Philistines and await a royal crown. He is the quiet and obedient child who lives in his own secret world.
Thank you, God, for a glimpse of Simon’s smile today.
He has a particular psalm in his mind that he wants to put to tune. This one begins with an image of a little deer wandering off to find the creek. But really, it’s a psalm of a desperate longing for an unreachable God. I assumed, since he’s only ten-years-old, and as our children go, he’s not the most precocious, that he just wants to sing about a little animal looking for a cool drink of water. But he unfurls the full lyric from his lessons on Psalms and now I realize he really does mean to sing the full lament of Psalm 42. It is his own intimate plea, and like the root that can become a harp he holds it close to himself.
Dear God, you have let me become the parent to a child, but not the owner of his soul. I’m grateful for your presence, though sometimes you seem too silent — sometimes you demand waiting more patiently than any earthly parent can wait. I love you too. Amen.
With only one string to drone to his singing, he sings:
“My soul thirsts for God,
For the living God.
When shall I come and behold
The face of God?
My tears have been my food
Day and night
While people say to me
Continually,
‘Where is your God?’” [Psalm 42:2-3]
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 