The lowering sun’s light softens as it shifts through the trees, and I come outside to breathe in the cool of the day.

The Lord walked with Adam in this slanted light, purples and blues shimmering on the edges of evening. I sense him here, too, keeping company in this golden hour.

It is good, he said in that ancient garden, and I agree as I watch the dragonflies, stained-glass wings lifting and settling in the waning warmth.

My phone buzzes softly and I reach for it, tuck it away, unwilling to cede a place for it just now in this holy moment. “Speak,” I breathe like the boy Samuel, sleeping before the altar. Like Elijah, trembling at cave’s edge. Like Mary, listening enraptured at his feet.

“MOM!” Ben cracks open the door. “Eat!” he declares, pulling me from worship to service. From respite to his need for peanut butter and applesauce with a side of yogurt.

But this…this is worship too. God speaks in the heat of the kitchen as well as the cool of the day, if I have ears to hear.

I follow Ben inside, my phone buzzing again as he brings me his plate and spoon. How do we hold the sacred and the urgent in the same space? Draw from one to infuse the other?

Abide in me, Jesus said. Not just a greeting at day’s beginning and end, but a continual feast in all the pains and complications of the middle hours, when the sun burns hot overhead and the cool of the day fades in our memory.

“Speak,” I breathe in the hidden place of my soul. And he does.

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.

Revelation 22:17