Nights and Days

I was soaking up the first six lines of Psalm 19. In this song that lures us to ponder the law of the Lord in verses seven through fourteen, I had never noticed its lyrical treatment of the day and night in the opening.

 1   The heavens declare the glory of God, *
      and the firmament shows his handiwork.

2   One day tells its tale to another, *
     and one night imparts knowledge to another.

3    Although they have no words or language, *
    and their voices are not heard,

4   Their sound has gone out into all lands, *
      and their message to the ends of the world.

5   In the deep has he set a pavilion for the sun; *
     it comes forth like a bridegroom out of his chamber;
        it rejoices like a champion to run its course.

6   It goes forth from the uttermost edge of the heavens
        and runs about to the end of it again; *
       nothing is hidden from its burning heat.

As I daydreamed about the lovely thing, some odd lines of my own came out in free verse. Those are below, but let me say that a Morning hymn that I love for the season of Epiphany was what flooded my heart on the heels of it all, and I would like to remind you of the first and last verses of this familiar hymn (#7, Hymnal 1982) by Charles Wesley:

Christ, whose glory fills the skies,
Christ the true, the only Light,
Sun of Righteousness arise!
Triumph o’er the shades of night:
Dayspring from on high, be near;
Daystar in my heart appears.

Visit then this soul of mine!
Pierce the gloom of sin and grief!
Fill me radiancy divine;
Scatter all my unbelief;
more and more thyself display,
shining to the perfect day.

Changes and Changelessness

How is today like yesterday?
We point to the Light: filtered at dawn
fading at dusk, plentiful between,
full-flooding at noon.

 O predictable Day, we love your rhythm
Your pattern of continuity
amid our projects tangled in worry,
our courses of flux and chance

 Fearsome changes stock us,
crouched around corners up ahead,
they hide; they creep; we don’t order them:
they just come: Out they pop!

 Have we moorings for fluctuating seas?
What anchor holds when invisible
currents surge to take us,
when heaving waters lift and toss?

 Surer than day and night are we held!
Like the sun greeting us in the morning
like the star covered blanket of night
reliably, rhythmically, steadily we’re rocked

 At length our Great Night comes, the complement
to our life-launching Daybreak of birth
Into the comfort of darkness, we’ll go
to know at last unending Day,
filled and wrapped with everlasting Light.

                        — David W. Price, January 2022