Be Still and Know

Be Still

It’s the end of a busy day. Rasps, blackcurrants, gooseberries and rhubarb, all brought in, cooked up or frozen down or put into crumbles. Dealt with. There will be more tomorrow.

Disturbing phone call. Mind in a whirl, imagining future scenarios, possible solutions, present insecurities of caring for a much loved mother who lives half a world away.

Eventually I headed for the woods. The glorious summer day – three in a row – is slipping into a peaceful evening and night. The light is rich.  The peace is deep, saturating my soul.

As I passed the deliciously powerful scent emanating from a voluptuous honeysuckle which expands year on year down our driveway, I stopped and breathed deep. And from deep inside I sensed a voice inviting me. 

‘Be still and know that I am God.’ 

Be still. Be still, body, mind and spirit. Be still and rest in the knowledge that God is God. That he is love. That he is in control. That nothing is outwith his control. That he is love. That nothing is impossible for God. That God is love. Rest in the knowledge that God is love. 

God is in his heaven and all is right with the world. Rest in the knowledge that God is God. I will lie down and sleep in peace, because he enables me to.

Be still

The Minutiae

I think someone has put me on a High Speed Rail Link. Except there doesn’t seem to be a start and a finish; rather it is a loop of intricate curves and patterns but which essentially just keeps going round and round.

I’m frustrated because I had hoped to introduce a more sedate speed to Advent. Maybe that sounds like a joke, since Advent is the lead-up to Christmas, but I don’t plan to run around all the shops being driven crazy by those dreadful modern Christmas songs. I thought that I would be able to slow down and focus on an advent meditation to really prepare my heart for the coming of Jesus into the world, which we mark at Christmas.

But instead I’ve been on a whirlwind tour of hospitality, of cooking and cleaning and volunteering for various things, interspersed by the Dog Walks.

Perhaps in the end, it will be Dusty’s dailies which keep me sane.

So fractured has my time been, though, that even on these daily walks I’ve struggled to focus, to find a peaceful cohesion to my thoughts, to really slip into the presence of God. 

Be still and know that I am God.

A wise man (or woman?) wrote that thousands of years ago. Sometimes I fear that if I am still, I am unproductive, and therefore the world may collapse round my ears. 

It can seem almost sinful to be still. 

But it doesn’t say just Be Still. To just Be Still might imply I have gone to sleep. No, it says Be Still and know that I am God. 

Be still and know. If I’m too busy, I don’t have time to know. To know that God is God. And to know him.

I must find a way to be still tomorrow, and know that God is God.