Friday, May 21

Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.
—Jeremiah 33:3

Life moves at high speed, and we spend our days trying to keep up with its velocity. Over the course of the years, we accomplish quite a lot, but the unanswered questions of our heart and soul are often left unexplored. We fall short for two reasons.

First, we are faced with issues so great and so numerous that our energy flows in only one direction. Our time and attention are activity-driven, rather than interior-driven, and we find it increasingly difficult to re-direct our energy to what is inward, unspoken, undefined. 

Secondly, the very prospect of entering the unseen spaces within us, where life's questions lurk, can feel so daunting that we hesitate to dip our toes into water so black.

The path away from the whirl of activity and into the interior world of "great and hidden things" is by way of prayer. When first we decide to follow this path, we feel fidgety and unfocused. Being still seems as foreign to us as it would to a busy squirrel searching feverishly for nuts prior to winter. We may need to drink stillness in small doses, until it feels more natural, more delectable.

But once we stop our exuberant and endless activity and quietly begin to call out to the Holy One, we will find ourselves discovering diamonds that before had been hidden from sight. Even the smallest moment of stillness, the smallest cry to God, begins the unveiling of what makes us truly human, truly holy.

O God, let me stop my frenetic scratching and scurrying so that the mysteries of life can be revealed to my hungry, silent soul.

These Signposts originally appeared on explorefaith in 2004.