An Invitation to be Restful
04-01-24
The theme for Formation Week 2024 emerges in response to the rapid pace and the busyness of life that has become a (too) familiar part of modern life. Our students carry the fullness of this life -- the weighty sense of call that brought them to seminary alongside the mounting everyday demands of academic, financial, ministerial, and familial/communal responsibilities.
Yet, such rapid cadences are interrupted by refrains in biblical passages like Psalm 46:10a that attest: Be still and know that I am God.
The call to “be still” can inspire resistance against such familiar rapid cadences of life as well as a sense of liberation to dare to imagine a different way of being. Yet at the same time, the practical and amplifying demands of everyday drown out the possibility of actualizing rest... to be still.
Everything -- from the patterns of our individual lives, the responsibilities that we carry, and the very systems in which we live, study, and serve — pushes rest back to the far corners of our imagination. Tired, exhausted, overwhelmed, even sick become the lyrics to the chorus of our lives.
In Psalm 46, the declaration of God as our refuge and strength comes in the midst of the loud and chaotic upheavals of mountains that shake and tremble even as the waters roar and foam alongside the geopolitical upheavals of nations in uproar and wars unceasing. How can one be still? How can stillness have a place in a world in uproar and tumult?
How can we be still when there is another page to be read, another page to be written, another meeting to attend? How can we be still when there is another birth to celebrate, another death to mourn? How can we be still when there is another disaster at hand, another manifestation of generational trauma? How can we still?
Yet, the psalmist declares: Be still and know that I am God.
To behold what God is doing, to know that God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble... the psalmist declares, we must first “be still,” then in stillness -- as we rest -- there is a recognition (“...and know that I am God.”). A recognition of the divine presence... a presence that invites refuge, strength, and help.