We sing about it: ‘Be still for the presence of the Lord…’ We read about it: ‘Be still and know that I am God…’ But we are never still! The bible often speaks of ‘stillness’, and the things related to it, such as meditating and waiting on God. But Christians, especially evangelical Christians, cannot abide stillness, we like noise and activity, with a side-order of mild chaos. We don’t do stillness.
Here’s why the skill of being still is important. First, stillness is a helpful start to a time of prayer, it puts us in the right frame of mind. Second, the practice of stillness and Christian meditation develops a ‘still’ heart, so that we cope better when things get frantic. Third, at times of crisis we can retreat into that still place and re-connect with God. We all need to learn to be still, it is a vital component of a healthy spiritual life.
Achieving stillness
I use Psalm 131 to help me with this. When I start to pray, or study, or meditate, my head feels like a busy train station at rush hour, full of noise and clatter. Here is King David’s solution:
My heart is not proud, O LORD,
My eyes are not haughty.
I do not concern myself with great matters.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with it’s mother. Like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord, both now and evermore.
David begins Psalm 131 by dealing with some of the distracting noises in his head. He names three.
Pride – that feeling that we are better than others, that God should be chuffed that we want to talk with him. ‘My heart is not proud’ he says, laying pride aside.
Second is haughtiness – that tendency to look down on others. ‘My eyes are not haughty’, he says and lays that judgemental spirit aside.
Remember that David was a head of state, and the work never stopped. It was his job to think about ‘great matters’. But in this special place he lays this third distraction aside, All that work-related head-clutter must wait, it has no place here.
This is how to achieve stillness; you cannot eliminate random thoughts and feelings. Just recognise them and let them go. It takes a little while to learn how to do this but after a while it becomes easier.
Mindfulness and meditation
So far, this is rather like mindfulness, a method of being quiet, letting go of distracting thoughts, and being in the moment. I have found mindfulness to be a helpful way to learn the skill of being still. But Christian meditation is more than that. When my mindfulness teacher asked me how it was going, I used to say, ‘Wonderful, when I take time to be still, I get a lovely sense of the presence of God’. He would say, ‘That is not supposed to happen!’
This illustrates the big difference, mindfulness teaches you to ‘be still’, biblical stillness says, ‘Be still… and know that I am God’. That’s a world of difference, isn’t it? This is why I always focus on a verse or two of scripture when I meditate. I often use this little Psalm.
The picture we are left with is of a small child with a full belly dozing happy and safe in its mother’s arms. Stillness, for the Christian, is clearing the decks to be with the Lord. This is where you belong, this is where you are safe, here you are accepted.
Roy Searle, a Baptist pastor in northern England describes a moment when his young son came into his study while he was working. ‘What do you want?’ Roy asked, ‘Nothing’, the little boy said, ‘I just wanted to be with you’.
That, my friends, is stillness.