Sunday Morning Meds -- My Cup Overflows

 

“You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” Psalm 23

Not long ago on a Sunday morning, I called my mother. She lives in a retirement home—it’s beautiful and spacious, but I’m deeply struck, every time I visit, with the odd depth of its silence. At meal times people gather on the first floor, as some do each morning for exercise time; but otherwise the dark and thickly carpeted hallways are always eerily quiet. So much of our world, outside the walls of that home, is not.

Mom said she was doing as well as could be expected, the usual pains and burdens, and, occasionally, usually at night, more than a little loneliness since my father’s death. Otherwise, things were fine. The food—yeah, well, it could be better, but she has her own stove and refrigerator if the menu looks less than appealing.

Yesterday, in the morning, she said, Ed didn’t show up, and it seemed strange to be missing him at breakfast. Then another resident told her Ed had died the night before, a heart attack probably. Whoever came in to take care of his passing had deliberately avoided disturbing the silence. It was, after all, the middle of the night.

“Well,” she told me, “things like that happen in the world I live in.”

She’s right, of course, not only of her world, but all of ours. But then, few of us awaken so frequently to significantly altered breakfast tables.

“Did you hear Dr. Martin this morning?” she asks, assuming we’re as earnest as she is about TV ministries. “I just love him,” she says. “His messages always bring such a blessing—and Taylor, did you catch his sermon? What a joy that was, huh?”

I’m thankful for Pastors Martin and Taylor—I don’t remember their real names. I’m thankful the Lord uses them and a host of others to channel the Holy Spirit into a room she occupies alone. And I’m thankful—and amazed—at my mother’s joy.

It’s my granddaughter’s fourth birthday this morning. Yesterday, she and her mother made special cupcakes—white frosting—for all the kids at day care. Today, there will be presents galore. Her cup will overflow when she sits in front of her cake and blows out the candles. It’s not quite seven in the morning right now. I’m betting that, somewhere across town, she’s already up and tooling around in her pjs.

Would that we all were as easy to please as my granddaughter and her great-grandmother, as David must have been when he first sang this most famous of his songs.

For me, my granddaughter’s joy is far less difficult to understand. In the confines of her world, darling little cupcakes may well be all she needs to overflow.

My mother’s joy is more inspiring, perhaps because it’s harder to imagine. I’ve not yet come to that point in my life when friends don’t show up for breakfast.

What makes King David sing is his knowing he’s loved by God Almighty. His song echoes through the centuries because so many millions of us know it too—my granddaughter, for one, even though only faintly; and my mother, deeply, for another.

It is a special gift of God to be able to recognize grace for the journey, whether his love comes by way of white frosting or TV preachers, in the silence of a retirement home or the energy of a kid’s birthday party. To be blessed is to know how richly our cups do overflow.