Day 23 – Issue 13

Be Still Know

Psalm 69:4 NLT

Those who hate me without cause outnumber the hairs on my head. Many enemies try to destroy me with lies, demanding that I give back what I didn’t steal.

Ever felt weary? Not merely tired, but weary. This is a feeling of reluctance to see or experience any more of something. It’s a feeling Katey and I became very familiar with as we struggled with MS. It was as if our appetite for life itself was being squeezed out of us. In truth, we even talked over suicide options at our bleakest moments, so blinkered were we by the disease that rose before us like an insurmountable mountain. Our prayers appeared to fall back to earth unanswered. Where was God?

In our ceaseless search for help and hope, Katey and I discovered just how poorly we were naturally equipped for this experience. If we chose to abandon God, our own resources were certainly insufficient for the journey ahead. However, in acknowledging God, it was difficult not to become so filled up with self-pity that prayer was merely an opportunity to vent, as victims of circumstance; victims who consistently talked themselves, or prayed themselves, into an ever-deeper abyss.

Weary, unable to go on, we slumped down in abject silence. It was in this space that we determined we would hold fast to God’s promises as promises, since we had no evidence for their objective reality now or into our future. If God says something, it must be so. I may not have experience of it, yet I can choose to affirm it. So began a journey of no longer skimming the horizons of our life and experience for a sighting of God. Instead we chose to meditate upon the substance of God’s character and promise, regardless of our experience.

Here we learnt the privilege of silence, both our own and God’s. God’s promise hung heavy in the silence, and somewhat like a masterpiece from a great artist that hangs upon a gallery wall, we simply gazed upon it and slowly allowed it to come alive to each of us, revealing different details with a unified whole. The art of meditation resourced our parched souls and weary bodies. 

QUESTION: What promises has God made that you need to hold on to?

PRAYER: Lord God, you are faithful and you are good, may that be enough for me