Morning Has Broken

It happened just this past Sunday morning at the 8:30 service. We were in the Cloister Garden for that service, and it was a particularly beautiful morning out there—a cool breeze stirring the leaves, water trickling through the fountain, the sun dappling the flagstones. We opened the service with the hymn, “Morning Has Broken.” 

“Morning has broken like the first morning,” we began to sing. “Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.” And as we reached that very line, some actual birds—I don’t know what kind—began to make quite a racket somewhere up in one of the trees. You could hear them over top the keyboard, over top our voices singing. They weren’t in key. “Praise for the singing!” we went on. “Praise for the morning! Praise for them, springing fresh from the Word!” And, I suppose, you could have seen the birds’ noise as a disruption. In the normal course of my life, I might have! But with the words of the hymn in front of us, it wasn’t a disruption, an annoyance. It was a blessing. And I wonder how often this happens in life—the disruptions, the annoyances that, if we could just view them another way, we would see in them blessing from the hand of God. “Do you have eyes, and fail to see?” Jesus asked his disciples when they found themselves worried, perhaps annoyed with each other. “Do you have ears, and fail to hear?” (Mark 8:18). And sometimes, I wonder if our eyes fail really to see the everyday holiness—if our ears fail to hear God’s song of blessing filling the air we breathe.

--Pastor Don Steele