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Complete stillness (30 March)

When was the last time you stood in complete stillness and silence?

I have often struggled with sleeping. This is the case now and it was when I was a child or teenager.  As a teenager I would sometimes sit at the top of our stairs and look out of the window, which gave a view of the road ahead and I would just watch and wait in silence.  It was somehow comforting.  I will sometimes do something similar today and stand and look out of my bedroom window in the middle of the night.  There is something about the complete stillness of 2 o’clock in the morning which touches my soul.  It may or may not help me to get back to sleep!  So when I read recently this paraphrase of Psalm 62:5 ‘I am standing in absolute stillness, silent before the One I love, Waiting as long as it takes for him to rescue me.’ (TPT) it reminded me of these moments.  It also challenged me to think how little I let silence and stillness  impact me during the day.  So many noises surround us, birdsong, cars going by, wind in the trees, children playing, lawnmowers going, doors banging, mobile phones pinging and on and on.  Where is the stillness and silence?  And why do we not easily seek it out?

The usual rendition of this verse is: ‘Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him’ (NIV) which almost has a sense of talking to ourselves, ‘come on, soul, find rest in God…’  Which for me reminds me that seeking God’s rest, His stillness has to be an active choice.  How contradictory that sounds, being active about being still, yet it is also so true.  For stillness will not come in our society unless we seek it out, pursue it, knowing that in it, our hope is found, our God will meet us.

In this time of Lent as we continue to journey towards the cross, I am drawn to the silence that there would have been, possibly at 2 o’clock in the morning, as Jesus and his few disciples sat in a quiet garden, the only noise being Jesus crying out to his Father to come and rescue him and relieve him of his burden.  Of course we know how that conversation ended, Jesus did meet with His Father and his burden remained, but he went forward saying ‘Yet not as I will, but as you will.’

I wonder therefore whether when we are grappling with burdens, unsolvable conundrums, distress we cannot even articulate, we need to more frequently choose to stand in absolute stillness, silent before the One we love and feel the presence of God wrap around us, rescue us, direct us and give us strength to walk through today or whatever our struggles are, therefore being more fully with Him.  Let’s let Him speak to us in the silence and stillness.