“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.” Psalm 19:14
I woke to a silent room this morning. Bill had left at 5 a.m. to travel to his convention in Hanover, and I had slept on and on….
He will be gone all day, conceivably late into the night, as he was last night. I will spend the day alone, working on reading and writing assignments for class at Duke, taking time to go to the gym on the sixth floor of this hotel, and watching the snow fall, as it is doing now, thick and absolute.
I went down to breakfast, toting my Bible, and read Psalm 19, which ends in the verse above.
“The words of my mouth.” They will be few today. The first thing I uttered aloud was, “Ich spreche kein Deutsch,” something that isn’t entirely true: I can say that much, can’t I? But the gentleman who approached me at the breakfast buffet spoke German to me at an alarming rate. I couldn’t tease meaning out of a single word.
“You speak English?” he said, and in response to my nod, he went on to inform me that I had dropped my room key. A very nice man who saved me from panic.
So my first words of the day were in German. I will soon ask the concierge for directions to the train station. I will buy a ticket (if they are not too expensive) to Lubeck, birthplace of Thomas Mann, and I will wander around the Buddenbrookhaus there, and take some pictures, and then I will come back. But I will say very little today, as I have no one to talk to.
Still, the meditations of my heart come fast and furious. Already today I have considered many things, several of which are chronic and heavy concerns. And already today I have been selfish and self-absorbed: the meditations of my heart run willfully astray.
And so, at breakfast, over a bowl of yogurt and granola, over a cup of coffee, these meditations are arrested and set straight, my eyes are given a face on which to gaze: His face, and also his love and mercy, new every morning.
