The Line I Took Out Of The Morning

You have said the same prayer every morning for longer than some of your children have been alive.

It is not long. Six or seven lines, in a particular order, and you say it standing, in the same place, before anybody else in the house is up. You would find it difficult to describe why the order matters. It matters.

The first line is the same as it was when your father taught it to you. The last line is the same. The middle has changed a little over the years, the way a middle does.

And about three years ago you took one line out.

You did it quietly, on an ordinary Tuesday, without any decision that felt like a decision. You got to it, and you did not say it, and you went on to the next one, and the prayer still worked, and the morning still happened.

The next day you did the same thing.

Nobody knows. That is the part that has sat oddly with you. There is nobody on the earth who could tell you what used to be in that prayer, because you have never said it out loud to another human being, and so the removal is the most private thing in your life.

You have thought several times about putting it back and each time you have thought, and said what, exactly.

Before we go further, hear this.

I am not correcting you.

There is no fault in an edit. Nothing has been broken and nothing has to be confessed, and I am not going to suggest that what you took out has stayed unanswered because you took it out.

I am saying I know there is a gap where a line used to be. That is all.

Direct, and then wait

Here is a line from a man who prayed in the morning as a matter of habit, and it is worth reading with attention to its verbs.

My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.Psalm 5:3

Two things happen in that sentence and they are not the same thing.

I will direct my prayer. The word is the one used for setting out wood on an altar, or laying a case out in order before a court. It is deliberate arrangement. He is not free associating; he is putting things in place.

And will look up. Then he waits. The arranging is his part and it is finished, and the looking up is what a man does when his part is done and the answer is somebody else's.

Which is exactly what your six or seven lines are, and it is why the order matters and you could not say why.

So let me turn and say it straight to you, standing where you stand before the house wakes.

You are heard in the morning, and the hearing does not depend on the arrangement being complete. Not one day, not once the missing line goes back. Right now, standing in the same place with a prayer that is one line short, you are the man in verse three, and his arranging did not make him heard, it just put things in order in front of somebody who was already listening. That is not my sentiment. That is what is written, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries a written line down onto a real man at a real hour before anybody else is up.

Now, why did the line come out?

Because it was the one that had a gap in it. Every other line in that prayer is either a thing to be grateful for, or a thing about your family, or something that stays true regardless of the week.

The one you removed named something that was not the case. And a man who says a sentence every single morning that is not yet the case is a man doing something difficult six days out of seven, and after a certain number of years the arithmetic simply becomes unaffordable.

That is not doubt. That is a man managing a daily cost that nobody else could see.

But look at the psalm again, because David's arranging includes things that are not yet the case. The whole psalm is a request. He lays it out in order and then looks up. The arranging is not a claim about the state of the world. It is a laying out.

And take this in, because it is already decided rather than pending. You have a morning that is still being heard, and the missing line did not create a hole in anything on the other side. The word says my voice shalt thou hear, and the hearing is stated as a fact about God rather than as a reward for completeness, and it is His Spirit who carries a written promise into a real house at a real hour.

Nothing collapsed when you took it out. Nothing gets restored by putting it back, either. It is a line, and it belongs to you, and you may have it back.