A Stone for a Pillow by Madeleine L'engle

Author:Madeleine L'engle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2017-05-23T04:00:00+00:00

Those lines were written four centuries ago. The idea of God everywhere is not new, but God has been pushed Out There, without, for so long, that we forget the within-ness, and the marvel that God can come and reveal wonder in the most ordinary things. One early summer day I came home from trying to clip back the weed alders which were blocking the view from the star-watching rock, and met a young friend, also returning to the house, carrying his shirt which was stained red with the miracle of tiny, luscious wild strawberries, and which remained pinkly patterned after numerous launderings. This uncovenanted bounty of the field was worth one shirt, and a reminder of the marvellousness of the ordinary loveliness on the hillside by Crosswicks.

Sometimes the loveliness of God’s presence comes in the midst of pain.

I wasn’t quite over a bad case of shingles when I went south to conduct a retreat. I felt miserable. The shingles blisters, which had managed to get even into my ear, had burst my eardrum. The weather was not cooperating. Instead of being warm and sunny (I had hoped to be able to sit on the beach and bask in the sun and heal) it was cold, rainy, and raw.

When the rain finally stopped, I went for a silent walk on the beach with two caring friends. The ocean was smothered in fog, but occasionally the curtain lifted enough to reveal a fishing boat, and a glimpse of muted silver on sea. One of my companions found some lovely driftwood. The other picked up some tiny donax shells and put them in my palm. And there, in the silence, in the fog, in my pain, was a sensation of being surrounded by the almighty wings of God, right then, at that time, in that place, God with us.

As Lancelot Andrewes called on God to be.

When I think of Jacob alone, his head on his stone pillow, I can easily hear Lancelot Andrewes’s words coming from him. The vision of angels which came to him when he fled from home, and had not yet reached Laban, changed Jacob’s perception of God, and he vowed a vow, bargaining with his father’s God, but finally affirming,

then shall the Lord be my God: and this stone, which I have placed for an altar, shall be God’s house: and of all that God shall give me, I will surely give a tenth to God.

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