“Be still and know that I am God”
The first part of this verse is crucial to understanding the second part. Yes, He is God of all and He doesn’t need us to acknowledge that to make it true, but we find Him the clearest in the still and the quiet. We look desperately for peace in our life and question emphatically when we can’t find it. Rarely are we willing to stop the search, to set aside our control,or to surrender our fears, worries or burdens to find it. But peace is found in the act of obedient surrender. Peace comes when our relationship with God is priority in our life. Peace comes not because He changes our circumstances, but because we are quiet enough to find Him in the middle of it. We find Him when our minds are cleared of distraction, the pulls and the demands of this life and we choose to surrender it all to Him because He is God of our life.
I completely lost my voice this week and at first it was a novelty and I just talked through it. I should have kept silent, but I didn’t miss a beat in my schedule, which involves talking all day. So now, for the second day, I sit here – nothing but air comes when I try to make a sound. At first I’m beyond frustrated and then I try to sing my temper tantrum song, “I don’t have time for this”. Finally, I surrender to the fact that I do indeed have time for this-mainly because I don’t have choice. I could not talk on my phone, I could not ask my kids a million questions to help plan future events, and I just had to be quiet.
You never realize how little you are quiet until you have to be and then a second feels like a minute and a minute an hour. – (Ok maybe not for my family, who got the reprieve.) We are so used to ‘noise’ in our life that we rarely realize how high the stress level is until we turn the radio off in the car or the TV off in the house or turn our phone off and notifications off. So why do live with all the noise? Why do we have to be on go all the time and why do I feel spent every day?
I began to ponder why it’s so hard for me to be still. Why do I resist sitting quiet and still so often? Why do I fill every moment with something? Then I heard a more pressing and important question, “what do I miss because of all the noise that surrounds my life?”. Today, the answer came clearly. I miss Him. …I miss hearing God…. I miss being still and simply resting in the fact that He is God. – (And I am not).
This time I didn’t even go down the list of all the things I needed to surrender to Him, I just sat still in the quiet, fully surrendered knowing He is God. This time my heart knew it and a deep peace came over me. Not one circumstance had changed – there was still great tragedy and hurt all around, but for this moment, I simply allowed God to be on His rightful throne in my life. He is God and I am not.
Just like a loving parent tells their child to stop talking and rest at bedtime, our heavenly Father knows we too need to rest in Him. He gently takes us in His arms and wraps us up tight and says just be still, and know I am God. I’ve got your fears, your pain, your worries and I have YOU. When you can’t see past the next second just close your eyes and rest in Me. “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
Take time today to simply stop for just a moment and “Be still and know that I am God.” – Psalm 46:10
