I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.
Psalm 32:8 (NIV)
The Eye That Stays on You
She gets home from second shift at eleven thirty and cooks anyway. She makes eggs with the last of the rice, in a pan she does not bother to wash first, the burner kept low so the noise stays down. Sitting would mean the day is over, and she is not ready for it to be over.
Nobody taught her this out of a book. Her mother taught her at this same hour, standing at her shoulder, saying too much before the salt went in, tilting the pan with two fingers instead of explaining the tilt.
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. The man who hears that has just come out from under a thing he had been hiding. He says his strength went out of him the whole time he covered it, and that when he finally told the truth about himself, the guilt went with it. Then another voice answers him and promises to teach him and to keep an eye on him while it happens.
He gets told who will be standing there while he walks it. The road stays unmarked. The warning that comes with it is about the horse and the mule, animals that get where they are going by a bit in the mouth, because nothing else reaches them.
She would take the map instead. Tell her tonight how the next six months go, in what order, and she would carry the page in her coat pocket and do the rest herself. An eye on you works the other way around. It means somebody stays there while you work, and says the salt is too much while the pan is still on the burner.
She learned to cook because her mother stayed through the nights she got it wrong. March will still not tell her what to do in July. The promise covers who is standing there when July comes.
He had spent a long time making sure nobody was watching.
A Prayer to Remember
Stay near enough tomorrow to say the thing while there is still time to fix it. I would rather have the whole week in advance, and you have not offered me that. Be at my shoulder instead, in the hour when I am tired and about to decide something fast.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
