Holding hands always brings comfort. I love the image on the cover of Worthy of Love with the couple holding hands and the shadow of the horse on the barn in the background. The reading today, in my Lenten devotional was from Psalm 131:

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore.

It’s a short Psalm but it packs a punch. If I can calm my spirit and quiet my soul, like a weaned child who sits on his mother’s lap, not to find food, but a different kind of sustenance: comfort and belonging. There are many times during the day that I long to climb into God’s lap, wrapped in the warmth of loving arms, and simply be. The trick is to be able to quiet my ‘self’, all the things in my day and whatever I’m worrying or anxious about, or planning or working on. 

I want to soak up the mighty love of God in the same way my children used to find love and peace in my arms when they were so little. To hear God softly singing a lullaby in my ear, while I maybe drift off into loving dreams. I find glimpses of this through my day: in the blue sky or the falling snow, the cattle following along with the hay sled or the horses nickering at me over the fence, the purr of the tractor or the putt-putt of the diesel engine, the warm sun shining into the living room or plethora of stars in the night sky.