WHAT A DAY this has been! What a whirlwind week, one more whirling seven-day blur.
I sit now in the stillness of my study at the church, thankful for the quiet—and for a few precious moments of peace. On most days, I might daydream about what it would be like to have another full-time staff member to help in our work. But today, at this moment, I’m glad to be alone for a little while. I’m thankful for the quiet. I don’t sit still and just enjoy such quiet peace as often as I should. I laugh with my parishioners that one of the reasons I preach is that I would hate to have to sit still during a whole service. We laugh. But there is more truth in that than I care to admit. Like so much of our society, I suppose I rarely sit still at all. Which is a shame. Which hurts us all more than we can imagine.
We live such frantic lives, hardly conscious of the high price we pay for that pace. We’d have to think about it to calculate the price, and to think requires some time, and we just don’t seem to have time. We’re so like the man frantically driving down the interstate whose wife, the official navigator, wakes from a nap and asks, “Dear, what direction are we going?” To which query the harried helmsman replies, “I don’t know, but we’re making great time!”
It’s a good question, you know. What direction are we going? It’s important that we know. Could it be that one of the reasons our society refuses to ever slow down, to ever sit still, to ever be quiet, is that we’re frightened of the thoughts we might think if we just had time to think them—thoughts about our purpose, our direction, our values? I can well understand why our culture might be frightened of such thoughts, but should Christians?
It’s been anything but quiet this week in my life—and probably the same thing is true for yours. And don’t get me wrong, I thank God for the gift of life and his blessing in productive activity.
But at this moment, Lord, thank you for the stillness. Give me the wisdom to avail myself of it more often for in stillness is true wisdom born. As your Presence hovering over the vast pool of possibility at this world’s dawning brought forth life and beauty, may your Spirit give birth in this stillness to worthwhile and meaningful depth of thought and of being so that when the time comes to speak, to act, our words and our actions carry with them depth of meaning and wisdom and love. The kind only forged in stillness.