On a whim…

Psalm 31:9-10: “Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away.”

Gravity does not announce itself.

It simply begins to act.

Most of the time, we live without noticing it. We get up. We move through the day. We lie down at night and assume the world will hold its shape until morning. Gravity is there, but it is familiar. It does not require attention.

Until it does.

One night the bed is warm with love; the next, the covers on one side remain untouched.

Nothing else has changed. The house is the same. The routine is the same. The night arrives on time. But the weight of the world has shifted, and the body knows it before the mind can find words.

Gravity makes itself known this way. Not through collapse, but through effort. Everything costs more. Getting up. Turning over. Breathing into the empty space beside you without reaching across it.

People tell you to be strong. They mean well. But strength has nothing to do with it. Gravity is not impressed by resolve. It pulls whether you consent or not.

This is the part of Lent that does not feel chosen. The part where practices stop feeling symbolic and start feeling necessary. The part where you are not trying to be faithful — you are simply trying to stay upright.

The psalmists knew this weight. They did not rush past it. They did not pretend it could be lifted by insight alone. They named it and stayed alive inside it.

Gravity does not ask us to understand.

It asks us to bear.

And somehow — without explanation, without relief — morning still comes. The floor still holds. Breath is still possible. Not because the weight has lessened, but because we have learned, slowly, how to live under it.

Prayer

God, hold me steady under what I cannot lift.