The God Who "Collects" Us

Tonight as I was praying the Liturgy of the Hours (the official prayer of the Church) in Spanish (I often do this for the sake of practice), I came across a word in a stanza from psalm 26. The stanza reads,"si mi padre y mi madre mi abandonan, el señor me recogerá." In the English version of the Liturgy of the Hours, this stanza is rendered, "if my father and my mother forsake me, you will receive me." However, the word for "receive" in Spanish is "recibir". What is this strange word, "recogerá"?

When I looked up the word on Google translate (a wonderful resource, by the way, for you language learners!) I found out that the word "recogerá" means to "collect." What an interesting difference between the English translation and the Spanish one! According to the Spanish translation of psalm 26, if father or mother forsake us (or anyone else near to us), God will be there to "collect" us!

What a tremendous difference one word can make, no? The insight that this spurred in my imagination is that our God is not only a God who "receives" us in our forsakenness, but is a God who will "stoop low" to pick up the shattered pieces of our hearts and help us piece our lives back together. Pat, TOR