Be Still and Know Psalm 46:10

We are living in days where the use of language is often charged, where the hopes of communication with eye contact maintained, cell phones on silent and tucked away, proper pauses that allow others to share thoughts, seem to be long gone.  Instead we have slipped into days of speeches rather than conversations and if you can think of something witty and quick that fills a room full of applause, you can fool yourself into believing you are a prophet.   Yet, not everything provocative is prophetic. 

I worry that there are too many being provocative for the sake of provoking.  Prophetic speech is not entertainment or an achievement, it is a responsibility.  The prophets rarely drew applause, they were often met with anger, awe, silence even.  They were not one of the many, they were set apart and few.  Yet, today there are so many voices filling the air, that I wonder if we will be able to hear God’s whisper through the noise of all the provocative speech.  In such a noisy world, how is it that we begin to achieve turning the volume down, so that we are able to hear more clearly what it is we need to hear and what it is that needs to be said.

The great prophets were not tossing their own thoughts back and forth as much as they were caught in a wrestling match with God.  The words of God were alive within them and God’s word was their message to all the world.  There is a place I believe we are being called to in this generation and that is out of our own heads and into the deep.  I believe we are being called out of entertainment and into God’s word, out of busy-ness, calendars too full, and into rhythmic practices of deep searching of the scriptures.  I believe we are being called to listen to what others have to say, that we might recognize that holding others as holy is sometimes more important than constructing the most provocative speech.  I believe we are being called to be quieter and to be still.

I wonder if God’s great prophets of this day will be remembered for their prophetic work of building community, instead of a word they once said.  I wonder if instead of having loud voices, they might be quiet, contemplative, deep listeners, who capture others in the powerful reality of what it means to be held in love, care, concern.  I wonder if when they speak, it will be soft, but the echo of it will reverberate throughout the world.  In the midst of a noisy, noisy world, how is it that we might guard against this tendency towards provoking one another with our speech?  I believe it is true that not everything provocative needs to be said and that we are meant to be longing for more—more depth, more truth, more rising from a place of being still and knowing God is God and we are not.  I wonder if prophets will have less to say and catch the attention of people through what rises from the stillness of how they choose to live.  Be Still.