Being still

  Today is the opening of Minnesota's favorite holiday which is rifle season for hunting deer.  People put on their favorite color of orange and head to their favorite hunting places to spend at least the weekend if not the full week of hunting, eating and sharing exaggerated tales of days gone by.  I know for many, my family included, the hunting is cool, getting a deer is even better, but it is the ability to share several meals with friends you haven't seen since the last deer season is the highlight of the season.  One of the characteristics of being a good hunter is the ability to be stay still and to be quiet for long periods of time.  When one is able to do this, our senses our usually heightened because the chances of that trophy deer to walk by increases.  There are several observations that I have made about being quiet and still that hit close to home. 


   The first one is that as Americans, we have a hard time being quiet and still.  If we don't have our earphones plugged in, surfing our social media accounts, or watching/doing the next great thing, we find something else to distract our attention.  If any of you have ever watched tv with me while I have held the remote knows that I cant stay one station long and I despise commercials.  It got to the point when I would go over to a friends house, I could not touch the remote.  Sometimes in order to be quiet, we have to be content with where we are and with our situation.  Being content often gets rid of our distractions to be people pleasers, and learning to find value in what we have.  Here is just a forewarning, being content does not mean we are lazy.  Just as any good hunter knows deer movement and knowing when to change locations and where too, being content should lead us to do the same thing.  Its knowing when and where we need to grow and making those changes without making a big scene out of it.


  The second observation is that learning how to be still and content is that it limits the bonehead decisions.  How often when things are not going well, or even when they are, we make a rash decision and it ends up back firing on us.  These decisions tend to be messy and to use a popular phrase, its like poop hitting the fan.  When we are learning to be content with what we have, we may not know what all of our steps are going to be, but we know what the next one is and it is taking it.  There are plenty of times where that next step takes us out of our comfort zone, but we know it is the next step and it is an important one.  It is learning the difference between taking risk and being stupid.  The last time I checked, God doesn't call us to stupidity.  Where God is calling us is often where we are fighting against the most or just avoiding all together.  This usually leads to a lot of awkward silence.


   The third observation about being content is that we listen.  When we listen, we are not listening to respond, but listening to learn.  This usually happens when the world is throwing the kitchen sink at us and Murphy and his stupid laws are camping out in your life,  During this time who we listen to is very important.  We will hear those dominate voices in our life, and they range from your a no  good idiot, to what on Gods green earth are you doing, to people who are in your corner giving you encouragement and telling you to keep on keeping on.  If we listen close enough, the next step that we should take often comes in a still small voice, and the only way we can hear it is if we turn off the noise and shut up.  Often during these times we are in the valley and maybe even in the shadow of death, but its where we grow the most because in the valley is where the good grass is.  The last time I checked, God usually doesn't send out emails, rent billboards or post on our Facebook walls to talk to us or make His point, but He often speaks to us in the still small voice.  Are we quiet enough to find it and listen to it, or do we keep listening to the distractions.


  The fourth observation comes from Psalms 46.  The Psalmist writing about how the chaos of life is throwing the author for a loop.  To put it in modern terms, it is being stuck in a crappy job with no way out, bills that are pilling up, unfavorable medical situation to family/relational strife.  I have seen verse ten broken down this way:


                                    Be still and know that I am God
                                    Be still and know that I am
                                    Be still and know that I
                                    Be still and know that
                                    Be still and know
                                    Be still and
                                    Be still
                                    Be


   We can have all the right answers and we can put away all of the distractions, but its about knowing who we are, knowing God and living in the present situation that we a child of His no matter what and living in that reality.  The sooner we realize that our life is about our actions coming out of who we are and not vice versa, the better life will be.