Good morning…
We wait in solitude and silence, beginning to feel God’s answers emerging. Dallas Willard recommends, “Stay there long enough for the inner being to be different. Muddy water becomes clear if you only let it be still for a while.” (The Divine Conspiracy, p 359)
Dallas reveals an interesting phenomenon. I google: “How does still water become clear?” I discover this quote by Lao Tzu: “Muddy water, let stand, becomes clear.”
I ponder this wisdom. Often, life seems muddy and clouded, our next course of action feels uncertain, unclear. Overwhelmed by life, we keep doing, we keep digging, we keep stirring up mud, and the clarity we seek never settles in.
In times of stress, taking action seems like the thing to do. Stopping, sitting still seems counter-intuitive. Yet, if we stop and take some time for life’s murkiness to settle, for all of the competing particles to relax into place, we often are granted a clear, new perspective. Staying there long enough in solitude and silence, we focus off of life’s mud and onto life’s meaning.
Taking time to stop, to sit, to breathe, we exhale our stress and we inhale our God. Exhale our stress. Inhale our God. Exhale stress. Inhale God. Exhale. Inhale. Fresh clarity comes and we sense our next step.
This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…” (Isaiah 30:15, NIV).
…Sue…
