From Pastor Jess
Be still, then, and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10
We are taught that being still means delay, complacency, lack of will, lack of ambition, going backwards. Stillness is antithetical to everything our current culture values, as defined by the gods of Silicon Valley. The highest good is acceleration, speeding up towards the next gadget or the next concept or the next ideology, and the next and the next, world without end. I wonder if this might be part of the reason so many of us feel like we’re drowning, not only in stuff, but in the whirling eddies created by everything moving so fast. We can never quite keep up, and we don't even know what the goal is or how we’ll know we’ve arrived.
Isn’t it exhausting?
Followers of Jesus, lovers of Jesus, have a very different foundation, purpose, and message. Stillness, discernment, centering, reconciliation, prayer, breath, love, service, mercy and justice are just a few of the gifts that those who love Jesus have to offer. We don’t offer or use them perfectly, of course, but even our stumbling attempts to do so are a bulwark against the pressures of acceleration. As we celebrate and mark Reformation Sunday this week, knowing intellectually that reformation is not a one-time event that occurred a little over 500 years ago, but an on-going, always happening process at the heart of all Creation, not just the church, I hope we can take hold again to the promises of God that have spurred so many reformations: that God is as near to us as our next breath; that God sets us free from whatever sins, wounds or addictions we are held captive by through sheer love and mercy; that our freedom from these things is our freedom for pouring ourselves out for our neighbors, who bear the face of Jesus; that God is our strength, our light, our comfort and our joy in every circumstance, and we can only do what must be done to heal the world if we do it in God and through God who loves us.
That means learning to be still. To be renewed in strength by the only true source of it. Everything else is fake news.
My Office Hours for the week of October 27th are: Tuesday (10/28) & Wednesday (10/29), 8:30am-3pm.
Rev. Jess Lambert