Aware of Her Surroundings

This morning, I tell my daughter that her big “growth area” this year is to learn to be aware of her surroundings. For example, we stand in her bedroom, and I ask her, “What do you see here? Take a minute to really look.”

She quickly scurries to pick up tissues, old water bottles, scattered school notes, and random pieces of yarn. This is a child who stays in her creative mind all day long. Who has time to look around at external surroundings when internal existential thoughts compete for attention?

I think about surroundings all morning and my hope that she and I both would see and respond.

My mind goes to Psalm 32:7 where the once despairing King David writes to God, “You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.”

Am I surrounded with songs of deliverance? If so, I’m desperately unaware.

I read Charles Spurgeon’s commentary on this one verse, and I begin to see my surroundings anew. Spurgeon says this about that one phrase, “surround me with songs of deliverance”:

“What a golden sentence! The man is encircled in song, surrounded by dancing mercies, all of them proclaiming the triumphs of grace. There is no breach in the circle, it completely rings him round; on all sides he hears music. Before him hope sounds the cymbals, and behind him gratitude beats the timbrel. Right and left, above and beneath, the air resounds with joy, and all this for the very man who, a few weeks ago, was roaring all the day long. How great a change! What wonders grace has done and still can do! Selah. There was a need of a pause, for love so amazing needs to be pondered, and joy so great demands quiet contemplation, since language fails to express it.”

I am surrounded by dancing mercies! I pray that I open my eyes to see and hear them. What do I see here? I take a minute to really look.

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