"Flee like a bird to the mountains."

Psalm 11:1 NRSV

 

Dear Pastors,

 

In her fascinating book Prospect, Anne Truitt, sculptor and artist, reflects on getting a new red and white bicycle for her 11th birthday in 1932. She had wanted that bicycle for the longest time, but the depression had prevented it from happening. Her parents were entirely dependent on inherited money and the Great Depression had struck them hard. " I felt as if we were being pulled down by a relentless undertow into a fathomless sea," she writes. " My mother sickened under the strain; after a spell in a Baltimore hospital she took to her bed; the shades on the four tall windows in her elegant high-ceilinged bedroom were drawn down almost to the sills. My father tried to stay cheerful but he gave way now and then to attacks of depression (tears ran down his numb checks) and of alcoholism; a starched nurse became an occasional necessity. My sisters fell silent and wistful. The air in the house quivered with stifled fear." That red and white bicycle enabled her to get away, to "flee like a bird" and explore the town she lived in. She says of that experience: " When my father put wheels under me, he offered me a healthy route from the smothering subjectivity of family to the invigorating objectivity of the world at large. His influence persists to this day."

 

Have you ever felt like riding on your bicycle and getting away, fleeing like a bird to a mountain? King David, in Psalm 11 does. But he begins the above verse with this statement: " In the LORD I take refuge..." The Lord became a means to deal with the difficulties of a struggle that drew around his life. The Lord invigorated in his life what could have easily brought him down.

 

Truitt ends her reflections this way: " As a child, I yearned over my parents deeply, silently, as silently as they bore their troubles. I came with infinite sadness to know that I could provide them no substantive relief. I felt for them the heartbreak I feel now as I watch my children encounter the inevitable struggles of adulthood. The wheel has come full circle." But she ends her comments with this important note:

" But I know now how love encompasses, absorbs and transforms all human travail, is in itself one of the shapes of wisdom."

 

Can the Lord be your red and white bicycle this week when the going gets tough? Let's take a lesson from David. There is a way out! " In the LORD I take refuge..."

 

In Christ,

 

Paul A. Fryman

Superintendent

Bluegrass District

The Kentucky Conference

The United Methodist Church