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Sunday 6 March 2016

New mercies

Morning by morning new mercies I see:

First word on a new page
Last breath of a night sustained
Daily miracles – by the hour, minute, second
I'm still breathing

A soft pillow
Blankets cocoon
The wrinkles around your sleeping eyes
Hot rivers massage my shoulders
Oats bubbling
Coffee steam dancing in sun streams

Sometimes

BUT

Even on the grey days
The overslept, no time for shower-coffee-breakfast days
The heavy sigh, pills aren't working days
The cold hands and feet, cycling in the rain days
The tears escaping on the train days

Even then, even then
I'm still breathing

Breathing the life you first breathed into me
I'm still breathing – life pulses beneath the skin
Even when I don't feel it or see it
I'm still breathing
And a million miracles are exploding in my cells
Growing, splitting, renewing, making

And my heart beats without my help
And my lungs expand, contract, expand
Limitless filling and emptying and filling again
Like you promised
Like the widow jars, like the wine jars, like the bread baskets

Like you promised
Like every new morning
When you flood me
With new mercy for the day


I was at a conference this weekend for church leaders in the Pioneer Network (that our church in Brighton belongs to). I was there to dance, and I wrote this Friday morning when we were singing the hymn 'Great is your Faithfulness'. I guess it kind of fits with my last post too.

2 comments:

Gina said...

Wonderful......thought provoking......miracles happening all the time....Thanks and praise to Our God

Anonymous said...

'I'm still breathing'; you have taken me right back to how I felt in the years following an immense loss. It seemed wrong that the world was still turning, people were living their lives, the post was still being delivered and so on. But I wanted it all to stop. I wanted to scream out, 'Can't you see what's happened to me? How can you all carry on like nothing has changed?!' Yet, I was still breathing. Sometimes it felt like I had to remind myself to breathe, but most of the time I simply became aware that I was still breathing. And yes, each day there were new mercies, carrying me forward, until eventually I became less and less aware of my breath, of my grief, and more and more aware of all that I still had and all that I could still hope in. Thank you. Amanda.