Abundance

​A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, July 16th, 2023:
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Psalm 65

R. The seed that fell on good soil produced a hundredfold.

You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide the people with grain. 

R. The seed that fell on good soil produced a hundredfold.

For so you have prepared the earth: you water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth. 

R. The seed that fell on good soil produced a hundredfold.

You crown the year with your bounty; your pathways overflow with richness. The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy. 

R. The seed that fell on good soil produced a hundredfold.

The meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy. 

R. The seed that fell on good soil produced a hundredfold.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

I think I’ve managed to sell myself a bill of goods. I seem to be walking on this well-worn path thinking of the next thing to accomplish. I finish one task while letting my focus be pulled forward into another, without even a pause to celebrate a completion. I’ve fooled myself into thinking the thread of this path is the place to be, and yet there’s a wide-open field around me. There’s life beneath my feet in the growing roots. There’s air moving around me, and sky and stars above. There is abundance in this spacious place, and I don’t often see it.

Saint David’s song drips with abundance. 

…You greatly enrich the earth
…the river of God is full
…You provide
…You water its furrows abundantly
…softening
…blessing
…overflow
…joy

Staying here in the pause with this song, I finally step off my hard-packed path, out into the field, and sit on the warm ground in the tall yellow grass with the Lion of Judah. His golden mane pushes into the side of my head, and I feel something hard. I have been wearing a pair of horse binders! When did those get strapped there? No wonder I’d been walking through a three-dimensional world like a two-dimensional creature. I reach up and remove all the tackle so that I can bury my face in His mane. And just breathe Him in. 

I lift my head and stand beside the Lion of Judah, hand in His mane, and my eyes pan the breadth around us, decked with His abundance.  How could I have let myself miss this? Standing with the Life, I can see the life given more abundantly. He noses me in the back to get moving, so I start off in the direction the path was going. Sometimes I’m even back on its dusty surface – after all, there are still things to be done – but it’s different now. The blinders are lying on the ground, and the air is redolent of the scent of His mane. I see Him moving in the grass beside me. I return to my task aware of what surrounds me, and I am joining in the singing of the abundance around me.




Noreen Smith

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