Sitting Still

As I type, I glance outside my window as two sparrows fly by. One sweeps over the Delta Ponds, the other lands on the stop sign directly in front of me. This one, the balancing one, captures my attention. “Don’t fall,” I whisper as I watch him shifting his weight. Ah! I smile and remind myself he has wings. I pause to consider this numbering the Lord seems to do.

Have you ever paused on a verse of Scripture and wondered if, just maybe, that truth was written for you alone? Perhaps it comforted when you felt alone or directed when you didn’t know which step to take next. I had one of those moments.

Yesterday I was lazy. I am sorry. Really sorry. Sorry that I lost the day to nothingness, a day unrecoverable. That one is gone. And while I was periodically granting myself “excuses” – the fact is, I went to bed knowing the hours were gone. Not memorable. I added nothing to God’s kingdom by wasting the day. I added nothing to my family. Nothing to my friends. Nothing to the wider community.

What’s going to happen in the future? Is that really what we want to know? God hears our words and knows our fears and has a glorious, reassuring answer.

Search. The word invokes images of looking, looking hard for the lost. At best, it is a pot of gold. At worst, a plane suddenly disappearing over the vast ocean waters. I wonder why God made it a search. This is not an exclusive Old Testament concept. Hebrews tells it the same way:  “Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that He rewards those who sincerely seek him.”   (Hebrews 11:6)

Moses came close to observe a burning bush – one that goes against all nature. And in the going, God spoke out. Terror shook this man to the core. When God speaks, something in needs to respond. And maybe the response should sometimes be the removal of our sandals – a recognition that we have entered a holy place. For the God of the universe to speak a word, or show a sign of Presence, shouldn’t that stop us in our tracks? One day after speaking at a church event, a woman approached me, waiting...

Just three verses into the Bible, the Creator shows us the power of words. “Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”   (Genesis 1:3) To equate the influence of anything we say with the authority of God’s voice is a bold overstatement. But right from the beginning, God introduces us to the power of language.

On a cold January morning, the day after a new year had begun, I sat beside my Dad’s bed. Mom’s nearly constant presence was missing in these quiet moments. Without speaking the words, she had decided to give me a few hours with this precious man whose birthday I shared, “the June 30ths” we called ourselves. She instinctively knew I needed time for my own private “goodbye” to this humorous, loving man who’d been brought down by a slow, debilitating neurological disease, an illness that through the...

“Just ask the animals, and they will teach you. Ask the birds of the sky, and they will tell you.”   (Job 12:7) I had my own Doctor Dolittle moment. I exchanged words with a seagull sitting on the edge of the balcony at Ocean Haven. Author Hugh Lofting was in the trenches with the British army during World War I. The brutality was too graphic to include in letters to his children. So he began story-telling about a fictional British village, Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, and the doctor who talked with t...

At its most basic, “stillness” is the absence of movement or sound. Most of my life has been neither stationary nor silent. Maybe that’s why the instruction to be still comes directly from heaven. We’d likely never think of that as a way to know God. “Be still, and know that I am God.”  (Psalm 46:10) How could I have missed it? All the times I’ve considered this verse, meditated and journaled it, how could I have missed this important truth? STILLNESS COMES FIRST. Does this ever happen to y...