Morning Prayer: Retrospect (Exodus 33)

I asked for Your face,

for fire,

for something certain enough

to hold without shaking.

Instead:

the valley.

Long road.

Bad weather.

Nights that would not speak.

Footprints in the dust

I could not tell

were Yours or mine.

I thought glory

would split the mountain,

light too fierce to survive.

Instead it came small—

legs that kept moving,

tea made by someone who stayed,

morning arriving again

without asking permission.

You hid me

in the cleft of things:

rock,

grief,

the narrow places

where language runs out.

And there,

not above,

not far off,

but near enough to breathe.

You passed by.

Not as answer.

As company.

Not rescue.

Presence.

Moses wore the veil.

We all do.

Glass darkly,

faces half-hidden,

truth arriving in fragments.

But one day—

face to face.

No veil.

No shadow.

No more guessing at glory

from footprints in the dust.

Only tears wiped away,

the last valley behind us,

and the full unafraid light

of being known

and still loved.

Until then,

I know You mostly

afterwards:

in the quiet kitchen,

in the dust settling,

in the strange peace

after the worst has spoken.

Looking back,

I see it:

not my footprints alone,

but Yours,

carrying me

through the valley

I swore I walked by myself.

I have loved You

mostly in retrospect.

—Rev’d Jon Swales

Artwork: In the Crevice — Richard McBee