be still and know

Sit and allow

sit

Child,

I am not here to speak to you.  You are not here that I might teach you something.  I ask you to be restful right now.  Be silent and quiet.  I do not ask you to do this so you may DO anything else.  I am not going to speak to you.  I merely ask that you are silent and just LET ME LOVE YOU.  Just be still and drink in my love.  Don't sit and think too heavily ABOUT my love.  Just sit quietly in my lap with your head on my chest and just let me love you.  My love is not an ideal, a theology to study.  My love, right now, is my action.  I am LOVING you.  Just be still in my arms and just let me love you.  Be still and drink in the love that radiates around you RIGHT NOW only awaiting your silence...your stillness to fall on.  If you are not still, you will only rustle it about.  But if you are still, my love will pour upon you like snow in a globe.  You CAN BE covered in my love, but you must be still and allow me to rain down on you more love than you will ever be able to contain.  Don't think!  Don't listen for me.  For I have nothing to say to you right now.  I only have something to give you.  I have only to love you right now.  Rest and BE LOVED my wonderful child.

Silence without [loneliness] without silence

It is possible to have silence without loneliness.  On the other hand, it also possible to have loneliness without silence.  We should desire the former of the two; silence without loneliness. The truth is we are afraid of silence.  When our minds and hearts are actually silence, something is revealed.  We are afraid of this revelation. What is revealed in silence may sometimes hurt or frighten, but this it is good and it is necessary.

In our silence, we are only accompanied by ourselves, and many of us can think of no worse company.  Why?  Because, in silence, we are not accompanied by the self we let everyone else know and see.  In the silence, we can only find company with our true self.  We are forced to spend that time with our true and whole self, and that self is without spiritual cosmetic.  This is the reason we so noisily avoid silence.

That silence and the revelation we find in that silence is the only way we will find whole peace (shalom), freedom, and life.  That path and its revelation is the only way I will ever know myself as I am.  Knowing myself as I really am is the only way I offer my honest self to anyone in love and integrity. 

How close am I to matching up the person I AM and the person people see and know?  How much of myself do I even know?  I will only find that person in the silence.

Bob Benson writes, "Pray for silence both in mind and spirit."

We often think we have to make ourselves silent so that we can hear from God.  We are taught to be quiet so you can ask things of God and hear from him, but have we ever been taught to ask for silence?  To pray for silence!

Lay in the dust

The story is told of a moment in an old ice house where they would throw down layers and layers of sawdust to keep the ice from melting. There was a day when a worker had lost his grandfather's watch in the course of the day. For hours, the other workers searched the whole building for the watch to no avail. Eventually, they gave up the search writing it off as "lost" forever. 

A small boy went in after everyone left and came out in a matter of moments with the watch in hand. When asked how he found what everyone else had spent hours trying to find, the boy said, "I just went in and laid down on the sawdust and listened for the ticking of the watch."

------

Before you conclude that prayer is pointless or unheard or unanswered, take a moment to just be still and listen...