Psalm 121:2 says: "Our feet were standing in your courts, O Jerusalem." The psalmist has in mind the joy he feels standing inside Jerusalem's great temple — a place so splendid it was impossible to look when the sun was reflected off the golden roof. Contrast here, Vasily Polenov stands near a tiny wooden chapel on the bank of the Oka River. How solitary, modest and humble. The morning sun produces a soft radiance on the conical wooden roof with the little cupola and cross..
May you be awakened heart and mind this new day.
May you be blessed by God whose love ever incarnates.
May you be reassured by the chapel's open door.
May you be confirmed in generosity at this expanse.
May you be calmed in the heavenliness of this altitude.
May you find pause in the stillness.
May you discover grateful communion in this captured moment.
May you experience healing in the roof's burnished glow.
May you feel fresh vitality in the abundant green — the clustered birch saplings, the river's echo.
May you learn your way by the water's meandering; the climbing hillside path.
May you be fortified in contemplating the distant ancient rocks.
May you abandon old thinking in this gentle dawn.
May you realize something new by the purple horizon.
