As I sit here on this two hour bus ride through Ecuador, I find myself stuck in my own thoughts. It’s almost overwhelming, when everything is silent but your mind seems to be louder and more obnoxious than ever before. I hate silence, yet I know I need it to pull my thoughts together. Tonight is different, my thoughts are all over the place and the silence is making it worse, I wish I could sleep but every time I close my eyes my thoughts once again overwhelm me to the point of frustration. Tonight I’m tired, I’m frustrated and I feel like I am doing the world a disservice. I don’t know why I think this way but it happens. Questions circle my mind like a whirl wind. Questions like what on earth am I doing? What does God even have planned for my future? What am I most passionate about? Why can’t I figure out what I’m most passionate about? Why can’t God just give me a solid answer for once? Then it hits. Be still. What? Jesus has been hitting me with this phrase like a ton of bricks. What the heck does that mean? Be still. Ok, well isn’t that what I’m doing being the only person awake on a bus at 9pm? Clearly that’s not what God means, yet I keep hearing it. Be still. Be still. We all know the verse ,”Be still and know that I am God..”. Psalm 46:10. But what does that have to do with anything? Be Still. Silence. Umm ok God. Do I sit? Already doing that. Do I wait? Already doing that. What I am not doing?? Asking this helps me narrow it down a lot! That should be the question I ask myself more often. Well I am not giving it to Jesus. Wow such a cliché Christian statement, one I hear so often but I think that’s what being still is. It Is giving it to Him. I didn’t know what that looked like for along time and to be honest I’m still figuring it out. But I think it looks like this- consciously handing it to God every time your mind gets filled with worry, doubt, or stress! When a thought of worry comes, handing it to Jesus and saying “Jesus this one is yours, you got it. It is not mine to hold” and doing this every time. Sounds exhausting right. It would be so much easier to distract myself with music, movies, or waking up a team mate to talk about something else. We don’t want to do the tiring work of giving things to God. It’s a process and as humans we hate the process. We simply want results. That is not how God works! I’m quite certain that God is a fan of the process. To sit and be still takes time, effort and maybe some emotional sweat! God says be still and know that I am God, there is that verse again. Yeah, well I think it’s what I needed to hear. It says “be still” but it also says “know that I am God”. Know that I AM has got your back! I AM GOD! HE IS GOD! Why can’t I wrap my brain around that? HE IS GOD! HE IS! And he wants us to know that! He wants us to sit and rest in him because the GOD of the universe has us covered. We don’t need to worry, we don’t need to fret and sit in our silence that overwhelms us. Because our God is with us and He’s got us. When he says be still and know, he is telling us right there that we can relax because we know that God has us under his wings and his plans for us will be better than we could infinitely imagine. I officially had this realization on this bus. If we know that God is GOD then why do we worry? He’s got it. So now I can Be still, relax, because I know that God is bigger than my worries! And suddenly the bus ride was over.
