My hands are full, my plate, my to do list. All full. That is the state of our culture. Busy, busy, busy. We are stressed from it. We are tired.
So why do we do it?
Because it is easier.
Really.
Being busy doing things is MUCH easier than being with people in relationship.
We are a society that wants to know "What am I supposed to do?" If I am doing something then I can measure HOW I am doing. I can measure success, failure. I can measure my progress, my improvement.
What does God want me to do? We read the Bible for the dos (and don'ts). We make a list.
Take being a deacon. Note: "being" a deacon, yet what is the first question? What do deacons do?
What indeed. We can bring meals, we can pray, we can help financially. When you are in need I will be there to DO something.
But what about just being there? I may feel the need to fix or solve your problem. But can I? Really, can I fix your troubles? So what can I do? I could be with you.
Twenty years ago, at the end of the third month of my second pregnancy I went to the hospital. I was there for two days. When I came home I was no longer pregnant. I spent two additional days at home recuperating from the loss of both baby and blood. When I was physically stronger I wanted only to be with my 18 month old daughter.
I sat on the floor wanting to hold her, love her, be with her. And she wanted...
scissors.
She had spied some scissors and was asking for them, getting frustrated with my "no" answer, and she began to cry and fuss and reach for them (I had placed them high out of her reach).
And I sat on the floor and thought, Anne, forget the scissors, here I am, come be with me.
And it hit me. That's what God wanted me to understand. Robin, the baby is gone, here I am, come be with me.
Being with, being still.
God loves us. He wants to be with us. We must stop doing, must stop reaching for everything else. We must be still. And be with God.
Be still and know that I AM God.
Be still and know God.
Be still.
Be.
With God.
>I agree - being seems so much more difficult than doing. but I can't help but think that God has designed them to work in some kind of harmony. Frances de Sales once wrote, "Go in all simplicity, do not be anxious to win a quiet mind, and it will be all the quieter. Do not crave so much to be perfect, but let your spiritual life be formed by your duties, and by the actions which are called forth by circumstances."Maybe "being" can somehow flow out of our constant "doing." Maybe I am trying too hard, and have set the two up as opposites when they're really meant to work together.
ReplyDelete>Sometimes I think I move so fast I don't even know I'm movingsort of like being on a plane. I cannot even fathom how quickly jets move through the air, yet it feels, and often looks, like they are standing still (well except for all the noise).I can be stressed, anxious, totally freaked out while I'm hurtling through the sky in a hollow tin tube. I could also sleep, or read. Inside the plane which is moving very, very fast I can be moving or still.I think it is the same with my person. My body must move, becoming a couch potato is not my end goal. I have duties and chores and joys to which attention must be paid.But while I am moving, I can be internally freaked, stressed, spinning out of control or I can be at peace. It is ironic to think that being at peace could be the next thing I choose to be anxious about. (Just how hard do you think God chuckles at us?)
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