Stop.
Be still.
Let this sink in:
“I am God.
I will take my place
Over all nations.
I will be known
And honored
From pole to pole.”
(Everyday Psalms, Psalm 46, page 112)
Caffeine winds me up. It doesn’t just provide a little burst of energy, it puts me in warp speed. I feel manic. So I limit my consumption of it, otherwise my thoughts bounce around too quickly for me to keep up with them.
There are times, with or without caffeine, when there’s a lull in the constant movement of life and I find myself not knowing what to do with myself. Far too often, I pull out my phone and scan through some articles and apps and audiobooks, filling the uncomfortable stillness with something, anything. It’s like the world around me has stopped, but I’m still moving, still buzzing, and I don’t know how to stop this inner locomotion, this inner frenzy.
Prayer slows me down, shuts me down. It’s the best pause button ever. But it’s best when it is matched with a similarly paused setting.
Sure, I can pray while riding an amusement park rollercoaster, but the adrenaline rush of the moment overshadows the subtleties of a simple encounter with God. Sure, I can pray while running errands, hustling from place to place to maximize my time. But my intense industry defeats the leisureliness relationship requires.
Jesus had an affinity for the wilderness, for quiet places where human efforts to control and make and feel were far away in cities. They may look dead, but there is life in these desert places. It’s just slow, methodical, ponderous. It’s as if the whole world has paused to pray. And maybe it has.
Jesus referred to prayer closets. I prefer walking though the woods and along the river near my house. It doesn’t matter where, just that the external setting matches the internal goal of stopping, of ceasing, of being still.
It’s in these places and moments that I can finally dial down the too-fast settings inside of me. It’s here that I can exhale the breath I’ve been holding in, let go the tension bunching in my shoulders. It takes time, but it’s in this prayerful atmosphere that I can stop the whizzing and whirring in my mind.
The default mode of this world is full speed ahead. Prayer resets the default to zero. Stopped, there’s just me, just God, and just this empty time and space to be renewed and restored.
Prayer: I want to run headfirst through life, God. But I lose too much along the way. I blast by the world and people around me. I blast past you and even myself, never pausing long enough to look upward or inward.But here I am. Stopped. I have no agenda but to be here. Present to you. Present to the world around me. Present to myself. This ever-spinning world has me dizzy and disoriented. Reorient me. Refresh me. Renew me. In Jesus. Amen.
For further reading: Three Mile an Hour God by Kosuke Koyama. SCM, 2021.