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Sheds, Snow, Be Still and Know that I AM GOD, 20Mar

“Be still and know that I am God.”    I think about that scripture a lot… and yet I’ve always thought that doesn’t mean I have to be idle. I was thinking so much about God, about me, about the church, and about bringing people back into the church… and about the conference I’m going to tomorrow about why people leave church.

Maybe we should ask why people stay in church rather than why they leave church. Maybe people are not being fed with spiritual wholesomeness, maybe they just don’t have time for light church activities, maybe they stay when they really feel connected.

If I hadn’t reached out with my faith questions I wonder how long it would have taken for someone to ask me (in love): “Hey there, Debbie, where are you with your faith?”  You know, I think people really had already asked me that, perhaps I really didn’t hear them talking to me!  An early person to whom I told about my faith questioning said something like: “Oh, you are a church leader… we really are not doing a good job of tending to our own are were?”. But well, it’s OK – no one knew – I know that everybody’s busy… it’s not really anyone’s fault…it’s no one’s fault that we are so busy… there’s so many people to attend to….  If I felt the time in the place to question to vocalize my struggles years before, I wonder if I would have done it. It took me awhile to get over this embarrassment of my faith questions. So, who knows where I’d be now…. it was God’s timing – not mine and certainly not anyone elses…. It’s always God’s timing… God took the corrective action on me now, after I was already well established in my church community, so maybe I’m the one that is supposed to now ask you people, you friends, “Where are you in your faith?”

People say read your Bible everyday, I didn’t… I did certainly talk to God everyday and I had just said to myself:  ’well I get devotions emailed to me everyday… I see God everyday… the bible scriptures seem to come to me while I am moving asking on this life… do I really need to pause to read??? I really am only idle when I write…. “… Well it was JUST then, immediately, that God ANSWERED my question. See, I’ve been cleaning out the shed and talking to God….you know idle hands do the Devils work, right? and for me moving hands frees my brain to think, and to talk with myself, and to talk with God. I had just finished getting the shed ready for somebody who is currently homeless and we are going to store some of his stuff. It’s okay we have some room. But that’s NOT why God blessed me in His attentiveness. That’s not why you are blessed. It is not the good works that cause God to give us Grace… We have it already. God made us human to get work done – He gave us two hands, two feet, a brain and He certainly gave us a mouth.   Sometimes we are to use our mouths to comfort and sometimes to keep quiet….when we know that we could say something, but the fact that we don’t speaks more volumes… Maybe we are to ask somebody everyday “where are you in your faith?”  and then shut up and listen..  I had just finished these GOD thoughts when I walking back to the house… it starts SNOWING! I stopped – cold – dead in my tracks. God, I really stopped, I was truly shaken to a stop… for two maybe three minutes looking at the small precious unique snowflakes.

Stopped IDLE in my tracks… looked up in tears and said:  “Thank you God, for the snow….Thank you God, for listening to me… Why did you choose me to witness your glory? Thank you God… for making me still and know that YOU ARE GOD.

Be STILL and KNOW that I AM GOD.