When All is Still

The house is still.

Yes, that’s rare. Dutch is resting due to his over-exuberance at church this morning. Heidi is playing happily on her own in her room.  Just now I stood at the top of the stairs, breath held in the silence, and asked God, “What do you want me to do?” The house is clean and emails are (mostly) caught up. Posts are written. Lunch is eaten.

Be still and know.

So I came, sat, talked with Him. Today’s message still ringing clear and true in my heart:

How do we mind the gap? The gap between where we are and where we want to be. Where we are and what we’re trusting God will do. The period in between, the waiting, the space in the middle where there is no movement.

The space that’s still.

Oh, what a well-timed message. My heart, so restless, resists this rest. We are addicted to movement, are we not? I tell Him, “When I see movement I know You are there. When it’s still, just so still, it’s hard to see You.”

You see?

When there are no ripples, how can I be certain He’s in the water with me?

But perhaps the ripples are simply hidden in the fog?

Florence Chadwick’s story still haunting me. She swims for 16 hours, then quits in the fog, later finding she was only 1 mile from the shore.  “If I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.”  Ah, yes.

Perhaps the greatest temptation to quit comes just a mile before the shore, when the fog clouds our vision and the stillness feels unbearable.

God, I don’t see you doing anything.

Like disciples in the boat, tossed by the storm as Jesus sleeps: “Aren’t you going to do something?!”

“You of little faith; why are you afraid?”

Afraid of His stillness in the midst of my storm?

But His stillness isn’t His absence.

His stillness is His presence. And the thousand gifts we count remind us of His presence. Even His movement, at all times.

So although my restless heart loves movement, makes it easy to detect the fingerprints of God, I am learning to see His hand in the stillness.

The shore may be just on the other side of the fog. Ripples of Him may be hidden, but they are there.

Because He is there.

“The LORD your God goes with you;  He will never leave you nor forsake you.” Deut. 31:6

Rest.