Vessel & Altar

"As a mother comforts her son, so will I comfort you." - Isaiah 66:13

Sister, last night the month closed on a sealed tomb. This morning the Church opens October with a picture of a body being carried. As nurslings you shall be carried in her arms, Isaiah says, and fondled in her lap. God is the mother in that sentence. You are the one being held.

You are being filled so that something can be set on the table.

That may sound backward after a September of pouring out. The vessel that was cracked and held in the Sorrows does not go back to work today. It is comforted first. Isaiah does not describe a woman earning her rest. He describes nursing, carrying, and comfort given to those who mourned. Rejoice with Jerusalem, he says, all you who were mourning over her.

Most women in your position know how to carry. Fewer know how to be carried. You know how to check on people, how to remember who needs what, how to sit up with the sick. Being held in someone's arms and doing nothing feels close to a fault. The reading does not treat it as a fault. It treats it as the beginning.

Psalm 131 gives the posture. My soul is like a weaned child on its mother's lap. A weaned child no longer cries for milk. She sits there because the lap is home. The vessel is offered that rest this month.

Let one person do one small thing for you today without offsetting it. Take the cup of tea, the ride, the offer to carry the bag. Say thank you and stop there. Do not owe them anything for it.

Lord, you comfort me as a mother comforts her child. Teach me to be carried without apology, and let what fills me become something I can set out for others. Amen.