This has certainly been an unusual week for much of America. Weather-related issues have stopped many of us right in our tracks. (We see you and are praying for you Texas.) Even areas who are more prepared for winter weather have struggled. Since last week, my corner of southern Ohio had a lot of ice before the snow settled in on top of it.
Power and water outages have been commonplace. Fortunately, we have had both at my house. My husband’s office was without power a couple days which meant he worked from home. Children started the week with snow days and finished it with remote learning days – at least the kids and teachers who had the utility services to function. Trees are down all over the place. It’s been an icy, cold mess.
It’s very minor in the grand scheme but this has not been a good week for writing. At least not for me. Life has just been more pressing. I tried a couple times to prepare to write a blog post for the week but simply could not get to it. My writing process includes focused time to listen for where God is leading me and writing out the bones of it by hand with my favorite pens (Pilot G-2 07 for my fellow pen snobs).
One day I sat down to write, and my pen ran out of ink. How appropriate for the week. I was starting to run short on patience by Friday afternoon, so I decided to pick up my Bible and read some Psalms. It opened to chapter 37 (NIV). I looked down and saw where I had already underlined verse 7. “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.” This portion jumped off the page at me, “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.”
Reading the whole verse and ensuing verses you get some different context, but those particular words landed square with me in that moment. Sometimes we are required to wait. If you’ve been without utilities, stuck physically or stuck mentally, you know the feeling of waiting.
What really gets me though is the being still part. It’s not an either/or scenario. It’s both. That isn’t the only place in the Bible that we are told to be still. In Psalm 46 we’re told to “Be still, and know that I am God.” In Exodus 14, God tells Moses, “The Lord will fight for you; you only need to be still.”
Sometimes stillness is the answer, regardless of what the cultural norms would have us believe. That’s a hard pill for many to swallow. It sure is for me. I can exercise patience, but I want to stay busy working toward something. I need to be constructive and feel like I’m accomplishing something worthwhile. I think this gives me the illusion that I’m in control. Stillness is not part of the agenda. When I plan for stillness – a necessary vacation or a set time of rest – that’s fine. But when stillness finds me, I struggle.
I don’t know why I fall into this trap because the stillness is always followed by God being faithful. When we do what He says, He does what He says. Did you get that? He is always consistent. We have a habit of changing our portion of the narrative by trying to prove we’re in control. We want to change the parameters on stillness. For example, I worked on taxes and wrote something for a friend. You can see how I blurred the lines of stillness.
I liken this to my children, who spent a great portion of this week not being still. Or quiet. They have asked questions on top of each other. I can’t answer one question before the other wants me for something else. I had to tell them multiple times to stop and wait a minute. I guess I’m kind of the same.
I badgered God all week for what He wanted me to write next. He just wanted me to be still and wait a minute. When Friday rolled around and I finally said “Okay, I will be still and won’t write anything this week.” He showed up and dropped this post right in my lap.
Friends, I am sorry if you are feeling the strain of being still and waiting patiently (patiently is another way of saying coping without getting angry). It is not the most fun place to be, but it does give us something to look forward to. Reflect on the times in your life when God has stilled you, perhaps just this last week, and see where and how He came through. Give Him a chance to be faithful. He will.
