Hands off!
Stop!
Cease and desist!
Be still!
Be still and know that I am God. 1
Be still – from the Hebrew root raphah – meaning:
to let down the hand (as in stop doing, be lazy)
leave off (a work that’s been started)
let (any thing) go 2
Stop. Preposterous! God says to walk away from my commitments? Be lazy? And at a time like this, when there is so much to be done? The climate is in crisis. Injustices are all around. Family needs to be cared for. There is grief, and loneliness, and pain. Life keeps coming, and God says, “Stop.” Really?
Yes.
That’s hard, isn’t it? To fathom Not Doing.
God invites us to Be.
Actually, this is an imperative, a command. God commands us to Be. Be still. Stop.
Especially when we are the people who:
when God is taking too long, decide to go ahead and act.
aren’t able to sit in the discomfort of the meantime, who Need to Do Something.
are stuck because the swirl of all the stresses is overwhelming.
are still holding on, thinking it is only our efforts that will change things.
Be still and know that I am God.
This is an invitation to trust. To stop trying to force it. To walk away. To let go of needing to have it all together. To know that God’s got this.
It is helpful to go back to the beginning. Our stories all begin with God. Our lives begin with God. Let us trust in the One who has been at this since the beginning:
God is our refuge and our strength,
who from of old has helped us in our distress.
Therefore we fear nothing –
even if the earth should open up in front of us
and mountains plunge into the depths of the sea,
even if the earth’s waters rage and foam
and the mountains tumble with its heaving. 3
God’s got this. We can let it go.
Before we were, God is.
Whatever the “it” is we are clinging to, God’s already got it. We can let it go.
Rachael
1 Psalm 46:10
2 Gesenius, William. Gesenius’s Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon. Translated by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1857.
3 Psalm 46:1-3