Leit-Motif

There should be a word for this. It's where a thought, idea, image, phrase, verse, or something of that nature keeps recurring in different contexts, so that you feel God is bringing it to your attention. Like you sing a song while you're alone in your car, then on Sunday at church it's one of the songs in the service. Or the preacher preaches on a passage, then later that week the same verse comes up in a devotional. So here are some things that fit that description for me about now, which I share with you in case what God has to say to me is not for me alone:

1. Matthew 6: 33: But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

2. The song "His Eye Is on the Sparrow":

Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home,
When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

Refrain

I sing because I’m happy,
I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.

“Let not your heart be troubled,” His tender word I hear,
And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears;
Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

Refrain

Whenever I am tempted, whenever clouds arise,
When songs give place to sighing, when hope within me dies,
I draw the closer to Him, from care He sets me free;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

Refrain

3. The image of God's care as a bird's wings:

Genesis 1:2: ... the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "God's Grandeur":

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

4. The promise that if we pray faithfully, the Holy Spirit will guide us:

The June 26, 2011 and July 3, 2011 sermons at my church.

The "Prayer Appointed for the Week" for this week in my prayer book, The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime:

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your servant who calls upon you, and grant that I may know and understand what things I ought to do, and that I also may have the grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.