THE FAST LANE OF HURRIEDNESS

“Be still, and know that I am God.”  (Psalm 46:10a NIV)

It's time to learn another way to live [other than the fast lane of hurriedness]. To do that, we must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives. As much as we complain about it, though, there's part of us that is drawn to a hurried life. It makes us feel important. It keeps the adrenaline pumping. It means I don't have to look too closely at my heart or life. It keeps us from feeling our loneliness. As long as I have [busyness], I can demonstrate that I am an important person.

"The press of busyness is like a charm," Kierkegaard wrote. "Its power swells... it reaches out, seeking always to lay hold of ever-younger victims so that childhood or youth are scarcely allowed the quiet and the retirement in which the Eternal may unfold a divine growth."

Hurry, then, is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.

-- John Ortberg, in “Leadership Weekly”

#5792

THE STILLNESS

“Be still, and know that I am God!”  (Psalm 46:10a NLT)

Once Mother Teresa was asked, "When you pray, what do you say to God?" She answered, "I don't say anything; I listen!"

Intrigued the inquirer asked, "When you pray, what does God say to you?" Mother Teresa's answer was, "He doesn't say anything.  He listens!"

It is in such listening that we hear the soft, still voice that, paradoxically, says nothing.  But the stillness in such times of prayer moves more powerfully than an earthquake, a hurricane, or a raging forest fire. 

-- Tony Campolo in “Following Jesus Without Embarrassing God” 

#5441

ELIMINATING HURRY

NOTE: After today I will be taking a short break due to knee replacement surgery. I hope to resume with SOUND BITES after Labor Day on September 6.

 

ELIMINATING HURRY

“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”  (Psalm 46:10)

"You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life." Imagine for a moment that someone gave you this prescription, with the warning that your life depends on it. Consider the possibility that perhaps your life does depend on it. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. Hurry can destroy our souls. Hurry can keep us from living well. As Carl Jung wrote, "Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil."

Again and again, as we pursue spiritual life, we must do battle with hurry. For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.

-- John Ortberg in “The Life You've Always Wanted” 

#5424

INTERIOR SILENCE

“Be still, and know that I am God!”  (Psalm 46:10a)

God is our true Friend, who always gives us the counsel and comfort we need. Our danger lies in resisting Him; so it is essential that we acquire the habit of hearkening to His voice, or keeping silence within, and listening so as to lose nothing of what He says to us.  We know well enough how to keep outward silence, and to hush our spoken words, but we know little of interior silence.  It consists in hushing our idle, restless, wandering imagination, in quieting the promptings of our worldly minds, and in suppressing the crowd of unprofitable thoughts which excite and disturb the soul. 

-- François Fénelon (1651-1715) 

#5302

PAUSE, WAIT, AND LISTEN

 “Then He said, ‘Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.’ And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave.”  (1 Kings 19:11-13a NKJV)

We must listen for God day by day. We must keep an ear open to our neighbor, an ear to our hearts, and a third ear to God.

Faith is a journey led by God. We pause, wait, and listen for the Guide who speaks more often than not in a still, small voice that requires careful, patient attention. 

-- J. Marshall Jenkins in “A Wakeful Faith” 

#4916

 

A RECEPTIVE ATTITUDE

“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”  (Psalm 46:10 NIV)

This solitude of heart goes beyond the domain of the withdrawn monk, hermit, or recluse. It acknowledges the importance of carving out time and space in our busy life to be alone and silent, to wait with a receptive attitude upon God. 

-- Judith C. Lechman

#4848

A HEART-CONNECTION WITH GOD

"Be still, and know that I am God.”  (Psalm 46:10a)

God will give us a fresh vision of Himself each day if we take time to be with Him, if we will approach Him with a quiet and expectant heart…

True life change is the result of extended periods spent sitting at our Lord’s feet, listening to His words, and seeking His face. “Look to the Lord and His strength; seek His face always,” Israel’s poet said (Psalm 105:4). We cannot convince ourselves of His presence; we cannot make our hearts believe and make our eyes see. He must make His reinforcing presence real. “If you seek Him, He will be found by you” (1 Chronicles 28:9).

Something very significant happens through these established times of worship: we begin to gain a heart-connection with God. We come to love what He loves. We come to hate what He hates. We come to think what He thinks. We come to see what He sees. We begin to concern ourselves with His concerns.

-- David Roper in “A Beacon in the Darkness”


#4763

IN THE STILLNESS

https://davidt-wilkinson.pixels.com/featured/sister-bay-sunset-psalm-46-david-t-wilkinson.html

“Be still and know that I am God.”  (Psalm 46:10a)

The ancient desert dwellers of our early Christian communities tell us that the surest way into the heart of God is to be still. In being still we learn to be attentive to the vast and hidden stillness that permeates all things.

So I invite you to begin by becoming attentive to that stillness as well. Seek it first in your own home. Go at night into the darkened room of your sleeping child and breathe with the moist, quick risings of a child's breath. Rise in the thin light of a new day. Do not turn on the lamp or the television or the coffee maker, but stand by an east window and let the dawn's fingers creep up over the fingers of your own hand.

Listen next for stillness as you venture out of doors. Hear it in the splintering of fall leaves as you cross a grassy knoll between paths in the park. Find it in the first cape of snow draped over the eaves of your house.

Turn finally to your own heart. The same stillness is there as well. At the core, buried beneath the turbulence of emotions rubbed raw by life's labor, is the same stillness discovered in the slow-moving sap of an autumn tree. In that primordial stillness beats the heart of God.

There is correspondence between our hearts and God's. They have imprinted on them the same unimaginable hope, sealed with a promise. The hope is for fullness, for completion, for being one with each other. What that will look like is hidden from us. The end and fullness of all things is known only to God. But we have glimpses of it.

-- Wendy M. Wright in “The Vigil: Keeping Watch in the Season of Christ's Coming” (Nashville, Tenn.: Upper Room Books, 1992)


#4654

SPIRITUAL QUIETNESS

"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."  (Psalm 46:10 NIV)

Profound silence is not something we fall into casually. This may indeed happen, and a blessed happening it is, but normally we choose to set aside a time and place to enter into spiritual quietness. Those who never do this, or shrink from it, run a very grave risk of remaining half-fulfilled as humans.

-- Sister Wendy Beckett in “Meditations on Silence”


#4580

ADVENT LISTENING AND LOOKING

I once saw a quote -- maybe it was on a bumper sticker -- that went something like this: “If you feel distant from God, just ask yourself, ‘Who moved?’” If God seems hidden to us, maybe it is because we have stopped looking for God in the midst of our daily lives. In the Scriptures, heaven is not a far away place “way beyond the blue” as the old song says; but rather it is God’s realm, God’s dwelling, and it is quite near to us. All we need to do is put down the mirror and open a window in the relationship God wants to share with us. Rather than a booming shout from the clouds, God more often is revealed in the “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12 KJV). We can hear if we are focused enough to listen.

Advent reminds us, too, that if we want to see the face of the hidden God, we do not do so by looking up for a heavenly sound or light spectacular. Rather, we find it by looking into the dark recesses of a stable and into the eyes of a humble, helpless child.

-- Robert Kaylor in Come to the Manger

#3994

BE STILL AND LISTEN

"In quietness and trust is your strength."  (Isaiah 30:15)


Be still… deliberately pause and discover that God is God. Stop reaching back into your own treasure of security. Stop trying to pull the strings yourself. Stop manipulating people and situations. Stop making excuses for your irresponsibilities. Stop ignoring reality. Stop rationalizing your way through life. Stop all that!


"How?" you ask.  Initially: Be quiet. The immortal, invisible, all-wise God, hid from your human eyes, is at work. Be very still and, for a change, listen.


-- Charles Swindoll in Bedside Blessings




#3835

THE STILLNESS OF THE UNIVERSE

Two thousand years ago God spoke through a manger, and we still experience the mystery! The Christmas story is filled with it. Mystery is not in what we see and do not understand. Mystery is in what we know deeply and cannot see.

I recall a crisp, silent night during Christmastide when my children were teenagers, and we cross-country skied in the moonlight. The sky switched on its tiny lights above us, and the moonglow lit the way. Spruce limbs drooped with icy fingers and cast crooked shadows all around us. The swoosh-swoosh of our skis startled the silence. A stream trickled beneath the ice, heeding the call of the sea. The soil hid beneath the snow, and seeds slept deep below, trusting the green of spring. Leafless aspen gazed at us from the other side of the pond, singing softly with the spruce in antiphonal chorus "Il Est Ne'": "He is born, the holy Child." We stopped, glancing back at the twin scars trailing behind us marking clearly where we'd been. But where we would go lay open before us, unmarred. We grew quiet, sensing anew that the stillness of the universe is a dance of barefoot grace with the Creator, a silence alive with cosmic joy and mystery.

Emmanuel! God is with us!

-- Marilyn Brown Oden in Manger and Mystery: An Advent Adventure (Nashville, Tenn.: Upper Room Books, 1999)

#3784

ENTERING INTO SILENCE

"Be still, and know that I am God…" (Psalm 46:10)


Entering into silence is like stepping into cool clear water. The dust and debris are quietly washed away, and we are purified of our triviality. This cleansing takes place whether we are conscious of it or not: the very choice of silence, of desiring to be still, washes away the day's grime.


-- Sister Wendy Beckett in Meditations on Silence




#3642

BE STILL AND…

"Be still, and know that I am God! I will be honored by every nation. I will be honored throughout the world." (Psalm 46:10 NLT)

Our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry and crowds.  If he can keep us engaged in "muchness" and "manyness," he will rest satisfied. 

-- Richard J. Foster

#2989

STANDING STILL

"Praise the Lord.
Praise the name of the Lord;
praise Him, you servants of the Lord,
you who minister in the house of the Lord,
in the courts of the house of our God.
Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good;
sing praise to His name, for that is pleasant." (Psalm 135:1-3 NIV)

What a privilege to stand in praise before the Lord! It seems to me that today we always want to be moving on; we cannot stand still. So many things claim our attention that we are perpetually on the go. We cannot stop for a moment. But he who is spiritual knows how to stand still. He can stand before God in worship while God makes known to him [God's] will. He can pause and await orders.

May I ask you, dear fellow-worker, is not all your work carried out to a schedule? And has it not to be done in great haste? Can you be persuaded to call a halt and stand a while before [God] in praise? You will learn much that way.

-- Watchman Nee in A Table in the Wilderness

HOLY STILLNESS

Deep restfulness, even amid outward activity, is one of the most beautiful marks and aids of the life of faith. Cultivate that holy stillness that seeks to abide in God's presence and does not yield too much to things around.

-- Andrew Murray


#2212