March 4, 2007

Good morning, may the Lord hold you close in his grace today! Last weekend I encouraged all of us to spend an hour in quiet time with the Lord. I found, as you probably did, that spending one full hour with none of the distractions of TV, stereo music, computer stuff, or reading… to be very difficult. I am surprised by this. 20 minutes proved to be almost too much for me; I have learned through the course of modern life to be restless and unquiet. In reading the zombie stories or watching the movies, we are horrified by their actions and numbers, but what really lies under all of that is their inability to rest. Think about it; the real horror of the zombie lies in what we recognize as what we would be like after a few days without sleep. Grey skin, shambling walk, no energy to run or wait for the food to be cooked, and a general apathy toward the living, all combine to show us in a condition of no rest. I realize that some of you wake up that way each morning, but a cup of strong coffee usually restores some resemblance of full life to your countenance. The ability to remain quiet and meditate on Jesus will require some practice on my part; what seemed so easy, spending a quiet hour with the Lord, proved beyond my reach on the first attempt.
It is possible that through the pace or our workplace, and my returning to school over the past 2+ years that I have lost the ability to sit quietly for any length of time. Does this mean that I accomplish more? It means probably quite the opposite in fact. I need, we all need, to regain that ability to sit quietly and commune with the Lord. We may not have any startling revelations about the Lord’s will in our lives in the first few attempts. The thing I noticed first was that the chaos of my thoughts became magnified in the quiet house, like my mind tried to fill in the space created by the quiet. Were the thoughts centered on the Lord? No, they gradually took off in every direction. It is obvious that my quiet time will require some effort and the strength of the Holy Spirit! The weekdays, perhaps as little as 15 minutes to begin with, will be my starting point. I will keep you updated on my progress. Let me know how you fared in this.

Bucky