Third Sunday in Lent

Psalm 63

O God, you are my God:
eagerly will I seek you.

2 My soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you:
as a thirsty and dry land where no water is.

3 So it was when I beheld you in the sanctuary:
and saw your power and your glory.

4 For your unchanging goodness is better than life:
therefore my lips shall praise you.

5 And so I will bless you as long as I live:
and in your name will I lift my hands on high.

From "The True Wilderness" by H.A. Williams (Library of Anglican Spirituality ed. Susan Howatch) 1994 (changed for inclusivity) p118

The joy which a person finds in … work and which transforms the tears and sweat of it into happiness and delight — that joy is God. The wonder and curiosity which welcomes what is new and regards it not as threatening but enriching life — that wonder and curiosity is God. The confidence which leads us to abandon the shelter of our disguises and to open up the doors of our personality so that others may enter there, and both we and they be richer for the contact — that confidence is God.

The vision which enables us to see the majesty of humanity, and of all people including ourselves piercing through the ugliness of the obscuring pathology to the beauty of the real person — that power of vision is God. The sense of belonging to the natural world, the exhilarating certainty that all things are ours whether things in heaven or things on the earth — that sense of belonging is God.