For Restoration: Three Days, Three Poems, Three PrayersSample

🌿 Day 2 — Sunday Morning Sick

Theme: Encountering God in weakness

Scripture: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” — 2 Corinthians 12:9

Reflection

There are Sundays when the body cannot rise and the soul has nothing polished to offer. Yet God is present even here — in the hum of the ordinary, in the breath that still moves through pain. Holiness does not demand performance; it simply asks for truth. When we allow ourselves to be met in fragility, the sacred becomes startlingly near.

Sunday Morning Sick (from Unfinished Faith, 2026)
By Elaine Rumboll

I did not go to church this morning.

I am in bed with the quiet heaviness

of phlegm and ache.

There is no choir here—

only the loose-limbed hibiscus,

petals splayed in surrender,

the hadeda’s guttural psalm,

a dove conducting the morning

with its low, persistent coo,

the Cape sparrow’s sharp hallelujah.

They say God is in the present—

and here I am,

fevered and flattened,

sinking into this kingdom of green,

rich enough to make Monet

put down his brush in reverence.

The paradox does not escape me:

that holiness finds me

not kneeling,

but curled like a comma

in an unmade bed,

the liturgy of cough and cup

enough to draw Him near.

Outside, the leaves offer no sermon,

just their slow, wind-drawn gestures—

as if to say:

even in weakness,

you belong.

Reflection Prompt

Where might God be revealing Himself through my frailty rather than despite it?

Closing Prayer

Christ of the quiet rooms, You meet me where I lie undone. Teach me to recognise Your voice in the rustle of leaves, in the rhythm of rest, and in the holiness of being held.