Today I read:

“My soul melteth for heaviness; strengthen Thou me, according to Thy word” (Psalm 119:28) …

and I laugh a little. I know the verse means wilting with discouragement (and I have just been there, and prayed this verse accordingly), but today I am thinking it a prayer addressing my melting in the heat.

A three-H day…

you can already see the heat in the haze…

…and I must go out in it, thin carrots, pick blueberries, rip out some particularly invasive weeds that not be allowed to root in so tenacious as they’re starting to do. And hot humid haze is my nemesis. I wilt, I melt, my eyes soon blur in midsummer’s steam.

Yet here I sit, first praising God with Psalms and songs, taking my second time with the Creator between chicken plucking and, shortly, my day’s writing.

All this will put me in the garden after shade has left and sun rays are pounding. But when it comes to wrestling routines back into place, I realize I must keep right order. Priorities first—those things we usually jettison in favor of the pushy to-do list of wood, hay, and stubble, and of watching the weather to avoid unpleasant field conditions (Ecc 11:4).

So, to venture into the day’s oven later, I will arm myself with a thermos of Wellspring’s water, and this prayer: “My soul is melting with heaviness; strengthen Thou me (for the task), according to Thy word!”