The light on the table

"I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me." — Habakkuk 2:1

Monday morning and the light through the kitchen window was not where it was last Monday.

It was lower. Just enough that I noticed it on the table, the way it fell across the Bible and the coffee and the place where my hands were resting. A week ago the light was higher and brighter at this hour and I did not notice it then because you do not notice the thing that is already there. You notice the change. You notice the absence.

I have been praying this morning for the people on my list and the list has not changed much since June. Edna’s hip. The woman who lost her husband. Dan and Beth and the children in Charlotte. Hannah, always Hannah. Pastor Holloway, who carries more than he says. The family at church whose daughter moved away and has not called. The names are the same names and the prayer is the same prayer but something about the prayer this morning felt different and I think it is because the light was different.

There is a kind of prayer that is watching. Not asking. Not pleading. Watching. Standing at the window and looking out at the morning and waiting to see what it will show you. I have been praying for a long time and the prayer has changed shape over the years the way a river changes shape. It started as asking. It became begging, for a while, when Earl was sick and I would have given God anything he wanted if he would just let Earl stay. Then it became silence. Then, slowly, it became something else. A kind of watching. A standing-still.

The light moves and I do not move and the morning tells me what it needs to tell me, which is usually nothing, which is usually enough.

September is coming. I can feel it underneath the heat the way you feel the creek underneath the rocks when the rocks are warm. Something is running. Something is changing. The garden knows. The birds know. The mornings know before the afternoons, and the prayer knows before I do.

I will stand at my watchpost. I will keep watch. That is the whole of it this morning.

Lord, I am here. I am watching. Show me what you need me to see.