Psalms 70 & 71 - The Ending in a Sunrise

Reflecting on a big change coming in my life

I have shared here many times about how I love the sense of new beginnings that a sunrise brings. Whether it is a glorious and colorful sunrise or whether it is grey and cloudy, they all do speak of new beginnings. But something else spoke to me this morning as Scout and I were out. Not only is there a sense of beginning but there is also an ending with a sunrise. Here’s what we saw as we arrived at the lake (and the bench is still being the bench¹)

This was photographed at around 6:30am, about 25 minutes from “official” sunrise. But even as I had left the gym about 30 mimutes before, there were the initial glimpses of light starting to appear in the eastern sky. So we could talk about all the beginnings with all this. But something else is ending when the light begins to emerge.

The night is ending.

The night that began with the sun setting on the previous day is ending as the next day’s sun arises.

As well, when can we really say when the day ends and the night begins or when the night ends and the day begins? I know “officially” our clocks say that when 12:00 shows up, a new day has begun, but we’re still in the middle of the night. But what about our ancestors? For them, would it be that the night began when the last light fell and the day began when the night began its shift into day rather than an arbitrary clock-time in the middle of the night?

This morning, what was on my heart was the beauty and hope and anticipation of something new beginning but also a recognition that with the new also comes the end of something else.

This was on my heart because that’s the space I find myself in. Over the last few days, I have been sharing with the congregation that I serve that I have accepted a new pastoral call and will be moving into a new position in the coming months. I’ll share more about the new position in the coming days but right now, I’m in the place of being with where I am in the present, with a community that has meant so much to me over the last seven years. I am feeling the excitement of what God has led me to but also the grief of losing being a part of this dear community. While I am in the place of being between the what is going to be and what has been, many of those I have been with in this congregation are in a place of seeing that something is ending and they don’t have the excitement of what is to come. Its all in there.

As I took in this moment at the bench today, I saw several things of this spectrum.

Obviously the scene is still rather dark as the sun was still a little ways away from fully rising.

But there’s also the moon up in the top right that is in a waning phase - it was full about 10 days ago and is slowly making its way to the new moon phase. So there is a spectrum of ending and beginning in the sky.

Headlights are also shining on the road on the left. They could be someone whose work time has finished (working an overnight shift) and they are driving home to rest. Or it could be a teacher who has left home for another day beginning. Or it could be someone driving to the next parking lot by the lake to go for a run.

Notice the circular ripple in the water just in front of the bench. I don’t know what caused it - likely a fish briefly surfacing but the ripples began and will slowly spread out and end before they emerge somewhere else again when another fish briefly surfaces.

And as I stood there to photograph this scene, I myself am in the place of something ending and something new beginning as are some of you who are reading this.

It is here where I found Psalms 70 and 71 speaking into my life and maybe into the lives of some of you reading this as well. These two Psalms (one quite short and the other quite long) are both Psalms calling upon God for help in the midst of trial. This is, of course, not unusual to find in the Psalms (a lot have been the same), but in my own feelings in this in-between space and in what I have experienced from others in the last 24-48 hours, I have heard variations on what this Psalm lifts up.

Let all who seek you
rejoice and be glad in you....
hasten to me, O God!
You are my help and my deliverer;
O LORD, do not delay! (Psalm. 70: 4, 5)

Be to me a rock of refuge,
a strong fortress, to save me,
for you are my rock and my fortress. (71:3)

For you, O Lord, are my hope,
my trust, O LORD, from my youth. (71:5)

But I will hope continually,
and will praise you yet more and more. (71:14)

So even to old age and gray hairs,
O God, do not forsake me,
until I proclaim your might
to all the generations to come.
Your power and your righteousness, O God,
reach the high heavens.
You who have done great things,
O God, who is like you? (71:18-19)

You...will revive me again;
from the depths of the earth
you will bring me up again. (71:20)

I will also praise you with the harp
for your faithfulness, O my God;
I will sing praises to you with the lyre,
O Holy One of Israel. (71:22)

Even within these is a sense of that spectrum of longing for God’s help but also expressions of deep trust. There is the spectrum of feeling like something is ending but also the trust in something new to emerge.

Fr. Richard Rohr often shares about how the pattern built into the cycles of life are order / disorder / reorder. Another way of saying the same is that the cycle is birth / life / death/ resurrection. But even with these stages, none of them are neatly divided. Order flows into disorder into reorder - there’s not a clear point when one becomes the next. Same with the others.

To return to the image and what I experienced this morning...The cycles of the moon aren’t distinct but instead flowing one into the next continually. Even as I watched it in a singular moment, it is (imperceptibly) shifting more into the waning phase. The ripple in the water was not static but continually moving further and wider until the ripple was unnoticible. The gradualness of the light growing on the horizon is so slow that it is hard to see until you see it like this (about 40 minutes later)

But in this last one, notice that the moon has moved out of frame (it was lower and to the right behind the trees). The ripple is gone. The sun is visible. The colors have shifted. Daytime has begun but even still notice that some vestiges of the night still remain...

I welcome your thoughts and prayers for me in navigating this in-between space of excitement about what is ahead but grieving who and what I’ll be leavine. But I also welcome your prayers for those who are in a different in-between space where the excitement of what is to come hasn’t begun to be made clear.

Here are a few other moments from the morning. I loved how just a small shift of the camera completely changed the way that the colors were in these two photos (literally no editing done to these)

And then this one from around 6:30am - just about 50 yards from where I photographed the bench. I loved the way that the moon and its reflection barely fit into the frame.

Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed

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PS - Scout and rainbows (the rainbows are from a cut glass piece my Dad made that is in one of my office windows)

1. For more reflections on this bench and upon finding meaning in these places, you can check out my book Ordinary Benchmarks by clicking here.