Robert Browning Knows The Middle

Psalm 7-13

Extremes…that is where artists reside; it is the way we’re made.  As we read the Psalms, this truth is poignantly sung.  It’s a mountaintop or a valley, a praise song or lamenting dirge.  This passage starts out in 7:1, “O Lord my God in Thee I have taken refuge…” and ends in 13:1 with “How long, O Lord?  Wilt Thou forget me forever?  How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me?” 

What is so glorious is the wonderful middle that artists pass on our way up to ecstasy or down to despair.  It’s chapter 8. 

“O Lord, our Lord,

         How majestic is Thy name in

                  all the earth…

When I consider Thy

         heavens, the work of Thy

         fingers,

The moon and the stars, which

         Thou hast ordained;

What is man, that Thou

         dost take thought of

         him?

And the son of man, that

         Thou dost care for him?

Yet Thou hast made him a

         little lower than God,

And dost crown him with

         glory and majesty!

                           8:1a, 3-5

Oh, the glorious middle of hope.  When artists rest, they always rest in the middle, that glorious and calming peaceful middle…where we lie on our backs, look at the stars and know;

The lark’s on the wing;

The sail’s on the thorn;

God’s in His heaven-

All’s right with the world!

         Robert Browning, Pippa’s Song

Robert Browning