“Sean, resting and being still is simply not something we know how to do. I feel guilty.”
As I listened to one of my pastors unpack her inability to re-boot and rejuvenate her soul, I was the opposite of shocked or surprised. This is typical. It is normal, and normal is boring…unable to offer anything of significance to a culture suffocated by an impotent Christianity and counterfeit representations of Jesus the Messiah.
Our culture encourages and rewards ambition without qualification. We are surrounded by a way of life in which betterment is understood as expansion, as acquisition, as fame. Everyone wants to get more. To be on top, no matter what it is the top of, is admired. There is nothing recent about the temptation. It is the oldest sin in the book, the one that got Adam thrown out of the garden and Lucifer tossed out of heaven. What is fairly new about it is the general admiration and approval that it receives.
In his fantastic little book, Crazy Busy, Kevin DeYoung adds:
Busyness is like sin: kill it, or it will begin killing you…when busyness goes after joy, it goes after everyone’s joy…Busyness kills more Christians than bullets…The greatest danger with busyness is that there may be greater dangers you never have time to consider. Busyness does not mean you are a faithful or fruitful Christian. It only means you are busy, just like everyone else. And like everyone else, your joy, your heart, and your soul are in danger.
Here is the reality: The NOW moment in which we find ourselves will require the makings of an anciently deeper disciple than what we currently have, calling the Jesus-Follower to do something we tend to be poor at: being Still — slowing…down. To some people, I have just dropped an offensive four-letter word. To another, I have just given permission to breathe. If ministers of the Gospel are “like everyone else,” we are failing to be like Jesus:
But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.
Luke’s portrait of Jesus is constantly drawing us deeper into inconvenience; to wade into the depths of slow. Have you ever noticed? Jesus is never in a hurry…ever! He was accessible and available, yet, occupied with stillness and slow at the same time: “and as they sailed, he fell asleep.”
In a world filled with distraction, being still can all too easily slip through the crevices of our days. However, when I am still before The Most High God…
I remember He is in control.
I remember He is God and I am not.
I remember He is always at work.
I remember His goodness and grace.
I remember nothing can separate me from His Love.
I remember that I am not what I produce.
I am reminded, it is His Kingdom I am a part of, not my own.
I leave you with three rituals to help us slow down and begin forming a Liturgy (Art) of Stillness.
1. Three Calendared, Daily Pauses. These are anywhere from 30-seconds to five minutes long. Four words to help with this: Pause. Be Quiet. Connect.
2. Solitude and Silence Once a Day. Sitting in Silence is an exercise in tolerating mystery and unlearning productivity and performance as identity.
3. Sabbath Once a Week. One, 24-hour period of ceasing toil. My wife tells it like this: “We cease our work to celebrate His.”
Embrace your limitations; lean into the inconvenience of slow.
