Balance and Being Still
I was going to write something about my little life when I started to feel embarrassed by the every-day-ness of it. Does anyone really want to hear about my daughter’s new obsession with fort-building (yay for Daddy and snow days!) or my attempt at Coq Au Vin this weekend?
I’ve been thinking about heroism and what that means. I think it’s tempting to keep heroes and regular people apart. This is why we either self-deprecate or self-inflate on social media right? We’re either assuring the world that we’re nothing special, nothing to see here, or that we’re a caped crusader with heroism leaking from every pore. You know who I’m talking about. It might even be you, but I understand. We all do.
We are small but we want to be big. Like children insisting that we are 6 and three-quarters, that we matter because we are getting bigger every day. It’s hard I think to balance the every day of life with the yearning for more, which is why we either hide or inflate ourselves – we try to pick either invisibility or celebrity and neither satisfies.
Yesterday I read the verse, “Be still and know that I am God.” It’s a nice verse. It’s often quoted to worriers and over-achievers like myself. But do you know what leads up to it? Read the whole thing:
This is so war-like! I thought “Be still and know that I am God” was embroidered on nice things, like tea cosies and grandmotherly pillows. It’s often been quoted to me as a helpful verse for the overcoming of frantic energy. But I think I’ve been reading it wrong. It’s not “Be still and know” as in, “sit there, dear, and try not to bother yourself”, it’s “Be STILL and KNOW” cried with the booming voice of thunder. This is a God who is not scared of Donald Trump or ISIS. This is a God who does not share power, who melts the earth with his voice. This is a God who offers to be our fortress, to be WITH us in war and peace, in heroism and dailyness, in abundance or in fear.
When met with this kind of God, my worrying attempts to either make much or less of myself seem quite silly. This is not a being who needs my help after all, is it? So I am free to live out redemption in my daily life without worrying about my heroic status or lack thereof. This doesn’t mean I’m passive, but it does mean that I am not worried. I am not anxious. I am not insecure. The God of Jacob is my fortress, after all, so I truly can “be still and know” that I have a refuge in him, better than any I could make for myself.