Be still and know that I am God.
It's a short little platitude on the outside, but eloquent in its simple message when you look deeper.
I've been sick with a stomach bug for the past week, which is my pleasant way of describing the freakin' parasite that has kept me no further than 10 feet from my toilet for 8 days & counting. At night, I've been too uncomfortable to lie on my side, so I've gone to bed on my back instead. Our 30-year-old TV finally broke around the same time I got sick, so I've laid meditating on my back to get to sleep each night instead. This simple change has transformed my daily attitude. I have always done my best thinking in this place between sleep and wake, this restful, alert, soaring, brainstorming, drifting place of clarity that I've never been able to call up on command.
I like noise. I like background TV, radio, voices, barking. It calms my fears. I have wished many times for a soundtrack to my life. Not only would I know of any impending danger just by the low, foreboding music, but I wouldn't have to ever be in quiet.
If I could vocalize the meaning I gleaned from Psalm 46:10 this week it was:
Only in the quiet will you know God.
It's not just the meditative quiet at the end of a busy night that has grown me this week, but the quiet of my lifestyle. I love it when we catch a glimpse of how we were designed to live. I haven't gone out save one hour this whole week. I've been homebound, locked down by the threat of parasitic contagion. And it has been one of the most calming weeks I've ever lived. For years, my soul has ached to rise in the morning, do a minimum of work on the computer, teach my child, cook, clean, sew & care for my family. Even when I finally had the opportunity to do so, when Sassy was born, I still filled the days with lots of unrelated activities probably pursued by me to make myself feel more important in the outside world. Nothing helps boost your self-esteem when you have no job, no school, little money, & a struggling marriage like having very important responsibilites that others are counting on you to do. This was not how God designed me to live.
I thought I would be lonely. I thought we'd never really be able to move to the farm. I thought I'd miss the running, the park play, the Saturday bars, the 24-hour Kroger. I won't. If I die never having owned a horse or milked a goat or brought eggs in fresh on Sunday morning, I'll miss that. I won't miss Target or the restaurants or even the coffee houses. I definitely won't miss being in the stupid car all day.
Only in the stillness will you know God.
It's amazing how the mind wanders, explores & always comes to focus on what is right when given the space -- the stillness -- to do so.
1 comment:
What a lovely, soft, quiet post.
That verse was set to a meditative tune and we sang that as the closing to youth group sometimes.
Your post tonight touched the part of me that wants to 'be still' and let go of the outside commitments. Now, how to do that without being sick...hmmm.
L
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