I yearn for a self-exodus: to flee my complacency, flee my worries, flee my doubts, flee my fears.
I think it's my nature to try to flee these things myself. I want to conquer complacency with ambition, worries and doubts with plans, and fears with disregard. This, surely, is how I can get out of MY box. With more me. Brilliant. But not.
But that's not how we're to do it. That's not the way of an exodus. In an exodus you're led out, like sheep...only I'm the runt lamb that thinks he can make it on his own.
I love Moses' response in Exodus 14. Everyone's freaking out. Pharaoh's army is on their heels. And there's the...uh...Red Sea. This was a bad idea. And Moses just says...
"Don't be afraid! Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again. The Lord himself will fight for you! Just stay calm". vv13-14.
Awesome. Yeah. Ok. I'm going to stay still. That sounds good.
But it does! It so does.
It's amazing, too, how in their stillness God finds them and almost sarcastically is like..."Start walking through the Sea". Duh.
From this story it seems so simple. All you have to do is be still and then...bam...God delivers.
I don't think it's this simple. But I don't think I've given it a shot. Really being still. Finding a place where I can just sit and find a way to fix my eyes on God's providence. "Be still and know he is God". I think we need to commit to being still at some point in our day, at least our week, and just sit and marinate on who God is and see if our problems don't start to dissolve.
It sounds so simple, but I know in my life, finding five minutes of quiet is something I rarely do. Feel free to join me in 'turning down the volume'.
Posts
I think that this first post on the blog is quite appropriate and reflects a necessary spiritual discipline that is often grossly overlooked, especially by me...listening.
ReplyDeletePerhaps we overlook it because of the near paradoxical nature of this idea of listening to a being that doesn't communicate verbally. I always had trouble with this idea when my youth pastor tried to explain it to me as an egocentric 15 year old. I mean seriously, how can you listen to something that doesn't speak?
Well, of course the answer is you don't, or at least that's what is the logical answer. However, as a much more refined 23 year old ego-maniac, I am now beginning to understand that the answer to that question is very simple and that this answer can in fact be generalized to a lot of our questions about God.
That answer... HE IS GOD. Simple I know. But when you stop to think for a minute, if there is a this thing out there that has the power to control everything, then it (or he) is probably just a little bit bigger then what I think. In fact, I am necessarily incapable of comprehending just how big God is, as someone who is in fact not God (not for lack of trying though I assure you).
What I have learned recently is to step back and always give God the benefit of the doubt, and that benefit is that He must be bigger than enormous and beyond monolithic. In this case, that means we shouldn't doubt that this crazy "God" figure may know another way to communicate with us other than verbally. After all He did create us.
If this then is the case and God is trying to communicate to us, then the next questions must be what is he trying to say and why can't we hear Him? And I don't have the slightest clue as to the answer to the questions but I am convinced that He has a message for us and all of creation if we would just listen.
Maybe just maybe if we stopped our busy day and opened our ears a little, we would hear Him whispering to us. We are always pushing God around, trapping Him in our life boxes, and telling him what to do. If you don't believe me think about the way we are taught to pray by the church... God pray for him, pray for me, help me with this, what about that? But if God is bigger than we think, then maybe we should let him loose. And maybe our prayer time should be more about God and less about us. Just listen.
I think he is desperate to communicate with our generation, in a way like never before. Our generation has sought after God so fervently and unconventionally. We are just what God is looking for. We are willing and able to expand the Kingdom but how can we expect inspiration or guidance when we won't listen long enough to hear the voice of our master? Just listen.
The key is listening. Just listen.