The sun is warm and the slight breeze cool on my bare arms as I run along the treed streets a few blocks from my new neighborhood. I’m slowly starting to learn my way along the curved streets, but even this morning I found myself back at a corner I didn’t expect. Still, the trees were lovely and the scent of some flower that I couldn’t see hung in the air and I savored the gifts in the midst of my mild confusion. I didn’t know how I’d reached this corner again, but I did at least know where to turn to get home.
A similar thing happened in my soulcare group last week. Someone had asked the question at the table, “Where have you heard God’s still, small voice this week?” And as I pondered, I was surprised to find that I’d heard it most clearly in the midst of my anger. At him. He didn’t turn away. Didn’t shout back. Just quietly waited until I’d said what I needed to say—even helped me discover what I was angry about through a dream. Then slowly and gently began to lead me into a deeper trust of his love.
As we moved from our shared meal and the table question to the living room and our prayer reflection—this time Steve Garnaas-Holmes’ meditation on Psalm 23—God’s still, small voice followed me. The friend leading the reflection read the meditation through once, twice, as we noticed what drew our attention. My attention was caught by the plea, “Lead me to the green meadow of your heart.” I could feel my heart burning with the longing to come closer, to be drawn in, to rest there forever in that beauty.
But I also noticed myself pulling away as she read the lines,

“Lead me in your way,
not mine,
even through darkest canyons
shadowed by death,
for your presence is my safety,
your will my comfort.”

Your will my comfort? Even when it leads through death? Even when it means letting go of my own will and trusting Jesus to lead me through places I don’t want to go? I felt fear and anger rising in me again, and the desire to pull away and protect myself. I couldn’t change my desire to pull away. But I could notice it and bring it—bring myself—to Jesus.
Our friend read the reflection again, asking us this time to notice feelings or body sensations, images or memories evoked by the lines that drew us. And as I began to think in pictures, it seemed the whole prayer was turned upside down. For a few moments, the green meadow I’d been drawn to felt too wide open, and I felt lonely and frightened. And the lines that had frightened me on our first reading now invited as I found in them the picture of being safely accompanied and held. Then, as I settled into that safety, I was drawn back to the first line again, and its final words came to life, tying firmly together the spaciousness and rest I long for with the security of God’s presence. “Lead me to the green meadow of your heart.”
I’ve long loved David’s words from Psalm 18, “He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me.” They echoed once more in my head as all of a sudden I realized, God doesn’t just want to bring me out into a spacious place, He wants to be for me that spacious place. His heart, a place safe enough and spacious enough to welcome and hold all of me, my joy and my anger, memories and hopes, stillness and activity. Yes, lead me to the green meadow of Your heart, Lord, the only place I can be refreshed and nourished and set free to love and to enjoy You and others and myself and life and all of Your good gifts.
 

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Photo by Tanguy Sauvin on Unsplash