Be still before the Lord, Psalm 37

Psalm 37:1-7 Part I Noli aemulari

1	Do not fret yourself because of evildoers; * do not be jealous of those who do wrong.
2	For they shall soon wither like the grass, * and like the green grass fade away.
3	Put your trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and feed on its riches.
4	Take delight in the Lord, * and he shall give you your heart's desire.
5	Commit your way to the Lord and put your trust in him, * and he will bring it to pass.
6	He will make your righteousness as clear as the light* and your just dealing as the noonday.
7	Be still before the Lord * and wait patiently for him.

Arrrrg!  Again with the patience!  Clearly, these psalms keep coming back and smacking me on the head wiht the reminder that "being still" and "waiting patiently" is what we (I) must do more often.  After four weeks of reading Job in the Sunday lectionary and now these reminders about patience and waiting and silence, I suppose I need to listen.


But, it is hard to be patient, as I wrote last week. It is hard for me to be patient.  The world (and my heart and mind) tell me that I must act if something is going to happen, and then I also fall into the trap of thinking that things need to happen on my own timetable.


Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.  Hmmmm.  


And, really, this is a gift, the gift of waiting, of being still, of being silent.  Many of us can carve out some stillness, some waiting, and some silence in our days.  Perhaps I could shut off the car radio.  Perhaps I could stop on the way to work for 5 minutes and enjoy the view.  Perhaps I could take more time to sit and cultivate patience through meditation and prayer.  The "off" button is sometimes hard to find, but it is there for each of us, even in small moments.   And once we get used to pushing the "off" button, we may find that we experience God more fully alive in our lives.


~The Rev. Peter M. Carey

The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.

~Habakkuk 2:20

Trust in the slow work of God, Teilhard de Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually–let them grow,
Let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

(hat tip to Inward/Outward blog)

I tend to be impatient. I get ahead of myself when I see something that I feel needs to be done, and I can slip into a mode of rushing around to get it done. It is harder for me to wait, to wait upon God, to be patient. Being patient, for me, at times can feel like I am merely stuck - that nothing is happening at all, that there is no motion toward an end. I suppose my impatience happens when I forget the work of the Spirit in our lives, it happens when I forget the work of God's grace ever working, and I forget that "it" doesn't depend on me, alone. But, I know in my heart that when I have the courage to wait and to trust in the slow work of God that my vision becomes clearer and that I see evidence of the Spirit at work, forming something new.

I pray that we all might have the patience that Teilhard de Chardin speaks of in this beautiful poem, recognizing that new life takes time to grow, and that we would do well to "accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete."

Praying for patience, for me, and for you,

~The Rev. Peter M. Carey