{"id":2860,"date":"2024-02-14T02:41:28","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T02:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/?p=2860"},"modified":"2024-02-14T02:41:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T02:41:33","slug":"evensong-118","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/?p=2860","title":{"rendered":"EVENSONG 118"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is the psalm I\u2019ve been waiting for \u2014 dreading, even. It\u2019s special, though not my favorite, by any measure. It\u2019s like the day someone close to you died. Or the day an unlucky man was born.

One verse is familiar to those of us who\u2019d rise and shine every weekday to Arthur Smith\u2019s \u201cTop of the Morning\u201d radio show: \u201cThis the day the Lord has made; \/ We will rejoice and be glad in it.\u201d

In my mind\u2019s ear, I hear the old \u201cGuitar Boogie\u201d man singing that verse \u2014 well, an older version of it, anyway, and in his Southern drawl. In my mind\u2019s eye, I spy my family at the breakfast table.

From there we\u2019d move to the den where my dad would share \u201cOur Daily Bread\u201d \u2014 no, not more toast and jam, more like \u201cGreen Eggs and Ham\u201d \u2014 our little booklet of daily devotional readings.

Each day\u2019s devotional consisted of a short Bible reading, a brief commentary and a \u201cThought for the Day.\u201d Until I spent six weeks at Grace Hospital, that\u2019s how every day of my childhood began.

And then, years later, it was my younger brother\u2019s turn \u2014 to spend weeks away from home and in the hospital, that is. He wasn\u2019t in traction, though, like I\u2019d been. But his case was much worse.

On the dark morning of his first surgery, I was alone at home. Our mom was with Ken at Baptist Hospital. Our dad was in the car on his way to Winston-Salem. I would go there later in the day.

I don\u2019t remember what I ate for breakfast that morning, if I ate anything at all. But I do remember what I read instead of \u201cOur Daily Bread.\u201d I opened my Bible to the 17th verse of this very psalm:

\u201cI shall not die, but live,\u201d the psalmist says, \u201c[a]nd declare the works of the Lord.\u201d Later I learned that my mom and little brother had picked the same psalm at random that morning, just as I had.

As we\u2019re wont to do, I took it as a sign \u2014 as a promise, even. I wanted so badly for my innocent little brother to live and to walk again, and to beat the damned disease that was eating him alive.

But, no. He survived that surgery and two other operations over the next three months. But this athletic boy never walked again, not after the radiation zapped him and the poison sapped him.

Now at 64 \u2014 getting older, losing my hair \u2014 I look back on that morning in the fall of 1976, and I see that my 17-year-old self was right to read those words with hope. For it was really about me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the psalm I\u2019ve been waiting for \u2014 dreading, even. It\u2019s special, though not my favorite, by any measure. It\u2019s like the day someone close to you died. Or the day an unlucky man was born. One verse is familiar to those of us who\u2019d rise and shine every weekday to Arthur Smith\u2019s \u201cTop … Continue reading EVENSONG 118<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2861,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860\/revisions\/2861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}