Friday, July 9

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and restore a right spirit within me.
—Psalm 51:10

Consider the seasons. The spring sun coaxes buds to open to life for the first time. Summer's heat brings them to full flower. The fullness of life begins to mellow in the autumn, and the starkness of winter becomes the embryonic stage for the new life of spring. So patterned, so predictable. There's a comfort in the order of that assured rhythm.

Sometimes our lives seem to get away from us. Our hearts get cluttered, sullied, fragmented by the many attractions and distractions of life. We lose our rhythm and order. We travel down roads that are unfamiliar, even dangerous. 

And one day we realize our heart is not clean, our spirit not right. Disease has overtaken us and the tempo of healthy order has become a distant memory. We hear a longing in our souls—a longing to come to ourselves again. That longing is the beginning of balance. It is the beginning of finding your soul clean and clear again before God.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and make my spirit right within me. Take away what diminishes and soils me. Gather up the fragments of my frayed life and bring them back together into a peaceful rhythm. This is my prayer, O God.

These Signposts originally appeared on explorefaith in 2003.