Excerpt from Psalm 121

"He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep."

Reflection by Christina Villa

I grew up with a dual religious background: Catholic and Unitarian. Though there were advantages to this, exposure to the Bible was not one of them. So it wasn't until I was in the 8th grade chorus and we sang "He Watching Over Israel" from Mendelssohn's "Elijah" that words from Scripture really registered with me. And that was because the entire piece consisted of two lines repeated over and over, one of which was: "He watching over Israel slumbers not nor sleeps."

For some reason, those words stayed with me. They had a peculiar power. Not only does God never sleep, God never slumbers, either!  What's the difference between sleeping and slumbering?  Well, none that I can see. But the writer of this Psalm, like you and me, had only words to describe God. And words are sometimes so inadequate that all you can do is repeat the same thing, hoping that repetition will make up for what's lacking in descriptive power. We do this when we tell people we're sorry, for example, or when we tell them we love them.  We do this when we repeat the same prayer of gratitude or plea.

So the next time you are at a loss for words, or when all you can think to say has been said many times before, don't worry about it. Words have their limits. There are things that are beyond them. God is one of them.

Prayer

Dear God, thank you for listening to all of us saying the same prayers day after day. Amen.

About the Author Christina Villa Christina Villa  is the Editorial Director of the Stillspeaking Writers' Group.