Stillness vs. Idleness

Because I often feel either afraid of stillness or guilty for spending my time in it, I'm writing this blog in case the struggle is familiar. I think it is a primary battle in our world: to have ears to hear and eyes to see.

Stillness is a discipline of faith. Stillness is believing that God's words and presence are worth paying attention to. Often we are afraid to be truly still before God in case we find that he 1. doesn't speak or else 2. speaks things we do not wish to hear. What if his voice is absent or cruel? It is an act of deep trust to truly cease our activities, our striving, our own filling of space and wait in stillness for Jesus' voice.

I remember reading that the purpose of all the spiritual disciplines is to empty ourselves completely so that there would be living room for God to speak into - to inhabit. In spiritual disciplines we intentionally create a void that our false-selves and all the voices of the world have previously inhabited. That void, once allowed, hungers for the Creator's voice to speak. Psalm 104:30 says, "When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth."

How many other voices are competing to 'create' the substance of our lives? And what good have all those voices done for the work of renewal or redemption in this world?

Idleness, on the other hand, is an act of faith-less-ness. Idleness is believing that nothing can be done, there is nothing worth believing in or fighting for, no vision of hope worth working toward. So in hopeless apathy we stagnate or indulge in all the destructions of mere distraction. When life loses all lustre we sink into lust. It is when we loose all sensitivity that we become captives of sensuality.

"But I feel irresponsible when I try to be still. I feel like I should be doing something." I've spent much of the last ten years struggling with this question of what is valuable to God and what it is to be truly responsible toward the call to follow Jesus. I've found that being still, creating space, gathering attentiveness, listening, waiting, dwelling, prayer and the like are actually quite hard work - especially in our culture where we tend to qualify the validity of our lives by the degree to which we can keep up with machine-like productivity and efficiency (the emptiness of so-called success).

All truly worthy work is borne forth as an embodiment of the small, slow, whisper of God found only in stillness. It may be that even when God speaks at his loudest we can fail to hear him. Are hard-heartedness and lack of stillness the same thing?

Stillness or Listening is a response to a God who is speaking. I've been noticing the past several months the incessant emphasis throughout the Scriptures to listen to God. Yet we feel irresponsible when we 'stop getting things done' so we can listen. If that's the case, then 'getting things done' is what's irresponsible. That is a life of failing to respond to the Speaking God. Idleness then may actually manifest as busyness. They might as well be the same thing since they are both ways that we either disbelieve the value of anything God might say or avoid communication because there are things that feel more productive (important).

The values of God are moving in the complete opposite direction from the values of the world. That's why repentance (completely turning around) brings us face to face with the Kingdom of Jesus. Isaiah 30:15 says:

"This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: 'In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.' "

If we were machines there would be no real need to do much listening. There would also be no need for beauty, tenderness, laughter, craftsmanship, poetry, song, embracing, aromas, moonlight, kindness, weeping, dancing, and on and on. Busyness doesn't make us more human, neither does idleness. Stillness, listening, losing track of time in love for something True, the deeply beautiful inefficiency of relationship - these are some of the reasons God spoke lovingly into the eager, attentive void.

Life really matters

Yesterday I had a long phone conversation with my dear friend Brian Mulder. He and I toured together last Fall and now he's back in Michigan getting ready to embark on an epic bicyclic exercise of trans-national proportions. He's doing Blood:Water Mission's Ride:Well Tour. If storks (the birds) wore leg garments I could probably qualify to be a trouser model on their behalf. I mean, I just ran a mile non-stop for the first time in my life this past week. I am very proud of that, and ashamed. Brian, on the other hand, will be fine. It is always sweet to be a part of his life and adventures.

Nearly two years ago my roommate Rajesh asked if he could invite his friend, who was in a difficult living situation, to join us here in this house. I really didn't want to say yes. In fact, I said no. Several weeks later, he insisted that his friend needed a better living situation. So I said we could try it if it were only for a little while, since we just didn't have room. So six months became twenty or so months. And now Sashi is heading to California to a new job and I'll be missing a great friend.

When I was in seventh or eighth grade we got our first youth minister at the church were I grew up. Two years ago I flew to East Asia to visit him and yesterday I heard him speaking the spanish that he's learning in Honduras, his new home. A good many years have passed between eighth grade and now. Richard is still a deeply important brother to me, more than I can say.

The middle of June will mean the departure of D. and Corrie Merricks and their two little boys that I love. They'll be closer to their families and new ministry opportunities in Georgia, but four of my 'tent pegs' are getting pulled up from the ground. I begin to realize how I will miss them, how their lives constitute, in part, my life. Things may feel a little strange, a little less secure as they go.

In the bookstore a few days ago, I sat reading book by a woman who interviewed many people -all of them older than one hundred years. One woman remarked that the world was missing the point of life. She said we were too worried about making money, achievement, and acquiring security. The point of life abides in sharing it through relationship.

I am struck by how important the lives of others can become to me. There are many I would love to write about and describe how I love them. We let people into our lives, that vulnerability deserves great respect and care. Love changes us though. And love is real. When I have the patience and the courage to gather attentiveness and wait with Jesus in prayer, I remember how his love is evidenced by a new creation in this frustrated heart of mine. He matters deeply to me. His love is true.

Our lives are a great opportunity to deeply matter in the lives of others. We can take that wonderful risk. Jesus has led the way.

Magic tricks or Good Relationship?

Sometimes I realize that I have believed in a sort of 'magic trick' relationship with God. If I say "In Jesus Name" at the end of every prayer then God will have to listen to me, or do what I say. That sort of thing. This created a lot of paranoia in my mind, because it added up to a belief that God can't be trusted to be good and have integrity - it was my job to keep him in line and make sure he did the right thing. And worse yet, it was up to me to repeatedly convince him to love me.

The Bible gives a better testimony. It's a big relief to learn that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was all his idea in the first place. All this love... he started it. I didn't talk him into it. I didn't come up with it. And he did it because he wanted to do it.

"You didn't choose me, I chose you," assures Jesus.

So I can stop worrying about whether I need to manipulate God. That's a needless effort for two reasons:

1. He's God, he can't be manipulated anyway.

2. He's good, so you don't need to... he always loves well.

There is freedom and peace in God's goodness and integrity and in the choice to love us so well in Jesus, a choice which was made long before I knew anything about it. It's reasonable to entrust ourselves to him wholly and let go of control and fear.

It's a simple point, but I have to re-learn it constantly.

the Accumulation of Calling

This past weekend, I was walking in the sea-wind on the Mississippi gulf coast with a good old friend who is a pastor down there. Somehow she and I began talking about 'calling'. This has always been a very ambiguous word for me and even a very frustrating thing to confront. I grew up thinking that you were supposed to have this absolute, kind of soul-piercing transcendent vocalization of the meaning of your life before you would be able to begin living it. There comes a point when that expectation either crushes you or breaks itself. These days I'm seeing calling has a cumulative quality. Kind of like relationship.

It's when I look back that it becomes more clear to me that God has been framing a context for how I participate with Him in His life now. There have been soul-shaping holy whispers along the way. The relationship with Jesus has changed as I've gradually learned what's important to God. Within the framework of exposure to God's life and work my desires adjusted in focus and my gifts have been developing. At this point, I am just beginning to stand back and observe that all this is going somewhere, that there is an intentional movement.

It's a very personal thing. I believe there is a general calling and mission that is shared by all who follow Jesus (and all who don't). We all are called in Christ to carry on his mission and work. Though that work is specific, how we flesh it out as real particular people often ends up volitionally vague. It's a creative opportunity though, relationship is. And though I have a general sense of the purpose of relationship, I sometimes have no idea what the heck I'm doing with it in any definitive way.

In the end, God is bringing his mission to life in me. Not through a singular explosive communication, but through familial attentive communion. I feel my gifts ripening and making sense and even reaching out into new possibilities. I see love among friends growing into new Kingdom Contexts. I am amazed to discover faith growing as the Father speaks the strength of his love against the sin that is "ever before me". The Story of Scripture, the very life of God, continues to give me a location in existence - a heritage (I came from somewhere) and an inheritance (I'm going somewhere). That means I have a place in God's life and work right now in the Present.

Calling then, has to do with Communion, with the accumulation of relationship with Jesus, with the ongoing maintenance of attachment through the Holy Spirit, and the faithful care and invitation of the Father to live as a member of his household.

ps. Please comment and share your experience of finding a place in God's life/story.