Learning to Be Still

I have written – and, with some of you – spoken quite a lot about how I feel God has been calling me to trust Him. Trust His timing, trust His plan and His provision. Trust. Letting go of what I think is the best way and acknowledging that the God of the universe has my best interests at heart.

That’s all true, and it’s still a prominent element in my life. But there is something else rising alongside that call to trust. It is a call, an invitation, to stillness. Our lives are all so busy all the time, being still in act or in mind is almost impossible. Last night was a perfect example, as I lay tossing and turning in my bed struggling to sleep even after having a good, productive day. That lack of true stillness before sleep caused some disturbing dreams that tainted my entire next day.

Despite how difficult stillness is sometimes, I’m learning it’s critical to our well-being. More than that, it is a beautiful gift we have to guard and treasure even more in our current culture. God can and will speak to us however He sees fit. He’s not so small as to be limited by our activity level. That doesn’t mean, however, that we won’t deafen ourselves to His voice with our self-imposed chaos. There is so much to be missed when we do not or cannot still our hearts and wait on Him.

Here is another example from the last couple weeks. I’ve been incredibly busy with work and with a recent dog-sitting job to the point that I was just knuckling down and focusing on surviving. It is only recently that I have had what feels like enough energy to do things like cook a healthy meal or take a bike ride on a cool day. One night, after work and a shower, I decided to take my book and sit on the front patio rocker. My grandma was here and I felt a bit guilty for not lingering inside to visit, but there was a part of my heart that needed the solitude.

So, book and pillow in hand, I left my phone on the counter and went outside. No music. No text messages. No technology at all, in fact. Just printed paper and a few pieces of chocolate. I think I spent just barely more than an hour outside, but that hour was more restorative than all the sleep I’d been getting over the last week or even the hours spent reading before bed. I was outside, I was undistracted, and I was still.

I don’t know what exactly constituted that stillness. Was it being outside in the sunshine? Was it the full, roundness of the summer breeze on my face? The lingering scent of lilacs pooling around me? That was a factor, certainly. But it was more about the attitude with which I went out into that space.

Another example. Mom and I went on a walk the other day after I got out of work. We certainly weren’t still and we weren’t quiet – we rarely are when we’re together, honestly. But there were still moments of stillness when I could hear God calling to me. A breeze through the trees around us, turning the leaves upside down in waves of color. Again, when I walked Molly Jo the other day. The wind in the trees, the birds singing around us, her happy face beside me on the trail. Moments of internal stillness that felt like a gift each and every time.

What I’m coming to understand is that this stillness is part and parcel with the trust I was talking about last post. God has been so gracious in His pursuit of me and has opened my heart to trust when I had no intention to choose trust. Now, I’m seeing there is more. There has to be.

Think about it. When we are busy, when we are doing and thinking and planning, we are choosing the opposite of trust. We are choosing to rely on our own strength and skill to provide what we think we need. We don’t give ourselves time to understand or God the opening to tell us that we don’t have the answers, but He is waiting right there with them. Unless, as Madeleine L’ Engle so aptly put it in Walking on Water, God comes along and shakes us by the scruff of the neck, thus pulling “this straying sinner into an awed faith” (96). That shaking is a beautiful gift to the incredibly reluctant, too busy, too ‘powerful’ human grasping at control. (I’m talking about myself specifically here, though all those qualities are pretty common in the human race, unfortunately.)

When we choose stillness, however, we are simultaneously enacting trust and enabling trust to take root. We are allowing the space for God to work in our hearts to make us ready for whatever He asks of us. We are trusting He will do this work and that His plans in the future, those plans He is working while we dwell in stillness, are for the best and completely in His control.

I always thought I was good at being still. After all, I can sit for hours reading. I spent four hours in my hammock recently doing nothing more than reading books and enjoying the sunshine. But is that stillness? Or is stillness choosing to be quiet, internally more than anything else? If that is the case, I can count on maybe one hand the number of times I have been still. Only recently have I been truly still with the understanding that this is a moment God may choose to speak. Again, Madeleine L’ Engle puts into words what I’m just starting to understand:

To pray is to listen also, to move through my own chattering to God to that place where I can be silent and listen to what God may have to say. But if I pray only when I feel like it, God may choose not to speak. The greatest moments of prayer come in the midst of fumbling and faltering prayer rather than at the odd moment when one decides to try to turn to God. (140)

There is a verse I’ll bet everyone who reads this has heard at some point or another. In Psalm 46, the poet is writing about God granting His people victory over their enemies and ending war regardless of its ferocity. Verse 10 says, “He [God] says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God…’” (NASB). This isn’t the place for a detailed examination of the passage. Instead, I want to share how I have been thinking about it the last week or so.

When we are tempted to doubt or have thrown ourselves into doubt, when stillness is the last thing on our minds and trusting God seems impossible, this verse feels like a two-part command. The first is clear. Be still. Stop striving. Stop trying to make things happen. Stop trying to be God.

Be. Still.

The second part is, as you may have guessed, “…know that I am God…”. But this isn’t just a matter of saying, “yeah, yeah. He’s God. Okay. Moving on.” No. This feels to me like a firm reminder. He is God. He is the creator of the universe. We are still, now we are acknowledging to ourselves who we are still before: The God of the universe who is powerful enough to control everything but caring enough to order our days. This is an active, participatory element. Know, actively reach to grasp despite the futility, that God is who He says He is. When we do that, then we will understand that there is no better place for our trust. The worries and the striving can all fall away. We don’t have to try so hard anymore, because He is God. We can be still. We can luxuriate in the stillness that calls us to trust and whispers God’s words to our softening hearts.

So, in the last few weeks, I have been learning the beauty and the necessity of stillness. It has been a rich, overwhelming experience. It sometimes feels like being flooded by God’s very essence, swept away in who He is, and thinking about that gift is almost more than I can take. I’m too human to survive it, except by the grace of God. And as overwhelming as it all is, I pray that you find the same stillness. I pray you can capture those moments of internal quiet and that you feel God speaking in the stillness.

All my love,

Journey

L' Engle, Madeleine. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. New York City, Convergent Books, 1980.