Be Still and Know // A Time of Refreshing in My Life, Part 2

The last thing that most of us suffer from is a lack of information – the whole world is screaming for our attention. Sometimes, the quiet assurance that comes from a bit of peace and quiet just eludes us. Sometimes, it feels like we live in our world where everything and everybody seems to be screaming for our attention. Take advertising – armies of creative people who think up new, (often), very clever ways of getting you and me to buy their client's products. The supermarket where Jacqui and I go shopping has large advertising stickers glued to the floor in some of the shopping aisles. So many people have the TV blaring every minute of every waking hour. So many people go to work, lurch from one meeting to another, without a break, without time to stop and reflect. Our senses are being bombarded with thousands of messages and signals and … ideas and requests and directions, EVERY DAY! And without knowing it, it ends up being a huge weight that we carry around. No wonder so many people are so exhausted. If only we can only put the weight down and take a break for a while. And then keep on going. It's true, isn't it? The more that technology – like phones and then mobile phones and PCs and internet, TVs, DVDs and radio, all that stuff has made entertainment and information so accessible – the more we become slaves to them. The more the cars replace public transport; we do this point to point rushing thing instead of, I don't know, standing waiting for a bus for 5 or ten minutes at the bus stop. There is some real upsides to all of those things. I mean I love the fact that I can watch T.V. and people can contact me on my mobile phone, it's so convenient. But we've lost something … we've lost the time. I don't know, just to stop and think, to rest the senses, to rest the mind, to rest the spirit, to reflect, to imagine, to dream. And the problem with so much of the stuff that we take in as entertainment or communication, a lot of it is really negative. You watch the news at night and 95% of the news is pretty negative. A lot of it is really frivolous (in sitcoms) on TV at night. Well, there's nothing wrong with one sitcom, but if 70% of our entertainment is a diet of sitcoms, is it any wonder that people feel empty? That there is shallowness, that there is something missing? Some of the stuff that comes across as fact or entertainment, to put it bluntly, is downright destructive. It's like eating bad food or sweets all the time. Now that's our condition, that's what's going on. But there's a flip side. So many people, so many of us believe in God. Surveys in the west say, 70+% believe in God. But I wonder whether it's a real relationship, a real thing in life. Or whether for a lot of people, it's a kind of, (I don't know), a pie in the sky, when I die type – of distant sort of faith thing. And we have this belief or this faith, on the one hand. And we have this whole need for rest and for peace and for joy and for wholeness, on the other. But a lot of people just never connect those two things. Never occurs to sometimes ask, to connect those two things in life. One of the things I love about the Hebrew culture is that they think and they speak in pictures. A few thousand years ago, there was a little passage written in book of Psalms in the Bible, Psalm 46. And the writer wrote something like this: Even when the earth is shaking and the mountains are falling into the sea. Even though the waters are roaring and foaming. Even though the nations are in uproar and the kingdoms are tottering. Even in the middle of all that, God has something to say. The beautiful picture, and the Hebrew nation, those people were not a sea fearing people. So the idea of mountains falling into the ocean and waters roaring and foaming, well, that was a real fear – turmoil thing. And the writer says, "In the middle of all the fear and turmoil that life brings, God has something to say with a voice that melts that all away." It is like a river of gladness running through a city, with a power that stops wars and calms oceans. God has something to say into that condition and it's this … "Be still and know that I am God." In that big cacophony of noise that we call life – where everyone is screaming at us and yelling at us. And things are happening and mountains are falling into the ocean, and people are criticising us and the entertainment is blaring at us, in the middle of all of that … a still, small, powerful voice, whispers into our hearts with unmistakable power ... "Be still and know that I am God. Just stop and pause for a minute. And in the depths of your soul, right, right, deep down where you live, know that despite all the turmoil that you see around you, I am God and I am in control. I am here. I am with you. And I have the power to bring you peace." With that one small statement, God connects one of our deepest needs – the need for peace, for quiet, for assurance – with the spiritual ...