Be Still and Know

"Be still and know that I am God." - Psalm 46:10

I like to keep moving--if not physically, then mentally.  It's actual work to shut down my thoughts and my desires to do more, read more, learn more, accomplish more.  

I also tend to overbook my calendar--partly because I have a hard time saying "No" to things, and partly because I want to believe I always have the bandwidth to do whatever needs doing. 

And I can usually pull it off--whatever "it" is.  Even if it crowds my schedule, leaving me with razor-thin margin and not a lot of peace, I'll find a way to make it happen.  

But being still... that's a skill I have not developed all that well.  

Maybe you resonate with what I'm saying.  Perhaps you feel like your margins are thin, and you're finding yourself attempting the impossible each and every day as you try to keep all of your plates spinning.  

It could be that even though you don't believe that you have the bandwidth to figure it all out, you worry that everyone else around you thinks that you do.  

And so you keep balancing and spinning, and you know that at some point it's all going to come crashing to the ground.  

Sadly, it's our relationships that suffer the crashes most of all--with our friends, co-workers, family and even our relationship with God.  

Psalm 46:10 offers us an alternative.  To be still, and know.  To know that God is and we are not.  To know that learning to be still is a practice that will allow us to heal and experience peace.  

When we figure this out, it has a wonderfully positive effect on our relationships.  William Butler Yeats once wrote, 

We can make our minds so still like water
that beings gather about us so that they may see, 
it may be, their own images, 
and so live for a moment with a clearer, 
perhaps even with a fiercer life 
because of our quiet. 

May you find stillness in your day today.  May you become a quiet reflection of the shalom of God to the world around you.  May you find strengthened relationships with others and with yourself.  

And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen.