The last Sunday of August

"O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you." — Psalm 63:1

The last Sunday of August and I drove to church this morning with the windows down.

The air was warm but it was a different warm than July warm. There was something in it that was already September, a quality I cannot name, the way the light has a quality at six in the morning that it did not have a month ago. The road from the house to Trinity is the same road it has always been and I have driven it a thousand Sundays and this morning the road felt like it was getting ready for something, which is a strange thing to say about asphalt and gravel but I have been saying strange things all week because the season is turning and I can feel it.

Church was small. Fourteen people. The summer congregation, the ones who come when it is too hot and everyone else is somewhere else. Edna was there. The Millers were in their row. Mrs. Patterson had her fan. Pastor Holloway preached about the harvest, which is what pastors preach about at the end of August, and I listened the way I listen, which is with half my mind on the sermon and half my mind on the prayer I have been praying all week, which is a prayer for the next thing. Whatever the next thing is. September. The children coming back to the classroom. The garden going to bed. The year continuing to turn.

I sang the hymns and I sat in my pew and I prayed and when the service was over I stood in the parking lot and talked to Edna about nothing and drove home and made lunch and now I am at the kitchen table and the afternoon is quiet and the Bible is open and the last Sunday of August is almost done.

I seek you. That is the whole prayer today. I seek you in the morning and in the evening and in the space between the summer and the fall and in the quiet of a house where the seeking is the only sound.

Lord, I am seeking. I have always been seeking. Let me keep seeking.