“Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still” (Ps 4:4b NKJV).
Great discoveries are made in stillness. Not only do we find God waiting for us there, we can travel far and wide. We can find answers and revisit past connections. We can know.
This afternoon I did absolutely nothing. Yet, I did a great deal.
As I sat on our back patio, the first ten minutes or so was spent sipping a good cup of tea while listening to the birds sing and sing. It’s spring. And then listening to young neighbor children playing behind their high wooden fence, their laughter bubbling and spilling over.
All the while my mind was busy, busy, busy. I have an important speech coming up, one involving stories from my family’s history. Such stories are vivid in my memory and were like little visits with times long ago. Which parts of the stories are relevant to my audience? Which parts touched and impacted my life? How could they encourage someone else?
So much was going on in my thoughts and my prayers, my body had to be still. The brain needed to focus, not on my physical balance or activity, but on the noisy thoughts and fast-moving videos in my mind. Strange how they didn’t affect me like watching a YouTube or a video. I was transported into them with the happiness and the humor, and the sadness and seriousness that cannot live on dusty journal pages. Nor were they in faded pictures but in rich color with sunlight and emotion. They live in an inner world. My inner world.
The question is not how do I keep them alive, it’s more how do I tap that resource and bring it forward?
Yes, this afternoon I did absolutely nothing. Yet, I accomplished a great deal. I travelled familiar paths deciding which treasures to present to an audience that needs to know they can choose their own paths. And the paths they have no option but to follow, they have the power to choose how they will make the journey.
It’s amazing how far one can travel while sitting in their back yard. And as amazing, how much I accomplished on an important project without ever leaving my chair.
But one has to be still to go so far and do so much.