Today’s passage is Psalm 46. Because God is our refuge, we will not be fearful, even when the mountains fall into the sea. God lives a city that will never fall although all the world is in an uproar of calamity. God destroys the world with his voice and can make all wars cease.God is with us. Be still and know the Lord. He will be exalted.
When are you still?
What desolations of God have you seen?
I was not still today.
I could barely write a letter before I was called away for some minor emergency that demanded my attention.
I didn’t even notice I had missed lunch until one of the office women showed me the plate of food she’d brought up for me when I might have a chance to eat.
I didn’t need to see the desolations of the earth because my day was a desolation of calamities that I bounced among. Did I remember God? Only twice.
“Be still and know that I am God”(10), says the Lord.
What kind of stillness is that?
I find it next to impossible to be still.
I practice focused breathing to help me.
I teach the students of my school to practice focused breathing in order to calm their minds so they can concentrate on their classes and their tests or before a presentation.
When I can extend that focused breathing to twenty minutes, which I try to do everyday, then I sometimes know that God is God.
When those rare moments occur, I feel connected to everything around me.
It’s nice. It never lasts, but it’s blissful.
I wish I could cultivate stillness in my life because most of the time I’m aware that the urgent, pressing things are overwhelming the important things, one of which is to be still and know God.
Unless I can be still, it’s hard to enter the refuge of God and feel safe.
I didn’t do that today and my energy feels utterly depleted.
Being still fills me up with God.
Being still lets me see myself and others a lot more clearly because I can see beyond the busy, noisy, distracting surface where things are always falling apart and crashing, setting in motion sloshing waves.
There is no peace, no harmony, no love.
I found a little stillness walking through the park this morning and admiring the moon.
I found a bit more during prayers at worship.
Those moments are my God-connectors.
Application: remind myself to do my focused breathing, to be still for at least ten minutes.
Lord, help me seek you in stillness.
