The “Busy” Remedy

“Be still, and know that I am God” Psalm 46:10

Still – What do you know for sure when you stop your busy activities?  What do you discover about life when you completely relax?  What happens to your perspective when you lose your strength or your health?

For months he fought, growing weaker and weaker.  When they stopped the radiation, his body crashed.  He could hardly move or eat.  But it wasn’t just the physical deterioration that kept him in bed.  He lost heart.  In constant pain, unable to do even the smallest of his usual activities, discouragement and depression gripped him.  Then one day things improved.  That’s when I asked my friend how his life had changed as a result of his battle with cancer.  He told me that he realized how precious his days really were.  He told me that he knew he needed to slow down enough to enjoy what he had instead of striving for what he desired.  In our souls, we know we would say the same thing.

But saying it won’t help.  God has been telling us to deliberately choose raphah since the time of David.  We haven’t listened.  It takes calamity to shake us loose from the trivial but urgent.  It takes standing on the edge and looking into the grave to get us to re-assess our myopia about the future.  And even then we have a natural inclination to jump right back into it.  “Just help me through this, Lord, so I can get on with my life.”  If we were honest about our own motives, we would have to admit that we really want to get back to “normal”.  Some lessons are very hard to learn.

“Be still” isn’t a suggestion.  It’s not “when you get around to it”.  God loves silence.  He loves “full stop”.  God often engineers life to remind us of our speed limits.   He loves rest areas along the way.  It’s more than slowing down just to take a look.  When we really stop, we discover some things about life that are absolutely essential to spiritual existence.  We realize that:

1. This place is much, much bigger than I thought
2. I am not in control
3. I am not the center of the universe
4. God doesn’t NEED me
5. I can be spent (I’m expendable)
6. Nothing stands in the way of my relationship with God except me

The world constantly presses its priority.  Unless we resist the force of flow, we will be swept into the stream of busy behavior regardless of our desire for a still center.  You cannot know God if your life is the rush hour.