Still Hunting

When we moved to Alamo, Georgia to become the parsonage family of the Methodist Church, I was entering the 10th grade.  Moving to a small town brought me to a lot of new experiences.  A summer job was farm work.  I learned to load watermelons and throw square hay bales on a moving wagon.  I learned about sweat, before sunrise to after sunset workdays, and not much pay.  I also learned to hunt.  I had a ..22 rifle that belonged to my father, but one I had never used.  One of my Alamo friends, Larry, introduced me to squirrel hunting.  It was not like I thought it would be.  He taught me to get to the woods early, sit down and be still, and wait for the squirrels to show themselves.  As I recall, we spent more time sitting still than shooting.

 

Our society places little value on sitting still.  Things move fast and people even faster.  Being productive and busy is what is important.    When we carry this secular value over into our spiritual life, we soon find ourselves in the midst of an impossible struggle.  Knowing and experiencing God in our lives is not found in our busy activities, but in our sitting still.  The Psalmist wrote, "Be still and know that I am God!"  (Psalm 46:10)  He was not speaking so much of physical inactivity as he was of a quiet-ening of the heart that makes us aware of what is going on around us.  I learned that being still in the early morning in the woods gave me an opportunity to see the slightest movement of the smart elusive squirrel.  When God moves in our lives, the earth does always shake, neither is it like the sound of a crashing tree.  Instead, becoming aware of His presence requires an attentiveness that is not inherited, but learned by practice.

 

Being still is hard for us.  We think we should be speaking words to God.  We should be reading page after page of Scripture.  We should be reading all six of our daily devotional books.  To simply sit still seeking nothing but an awareness that He is with us is not always the goal of our devotional moments.  Yet, when we dare to enter into the stillness, we may be surprised at the gentle sounds and movements of the Spirit within us.