The Stilling Season
Summer’s slow days were filled with a quiet questioning that my explorations into nature seemed to repeat back to me. The question strolled along with me into this fall as well. When Scripture says to “Be still and know that I am God,” (Psalm 46:10) what is truly meant?
If you wander up into one of the myriad gulches above Cottonwood Lake, you’ll discover an almost secret realm of forest, meadow, and bubbling brook coalescing into a living invitation to “be still.” A sloping fire-pit is unassumingly nestled beneath the protective shade of towering pines, and rounded bushes bank a luscious, alpine meadow—a joyful haven for wildflowers of every shape, color, and style.
My favorite spot is a small, grassy knoll on the edge of the brook that winds contentedly through the meadow and then laughs its way down the slope behind me into the forest world below. I sit crosslegged in the grass, butterflies bumping sleepily into me as the afternoon sun warms the earth. The embrace of light. A lulling assurance. I watch the wildflowers sway; a deer across the meadow weaves between the bushes, eyeing me questioningly. Who are you? and How did you find us?
I smile. And I try to breathe deeply, to relax my shoulders. I’m here to rest, after all. To let slip all the cares from below this mountainside. But there’s always that hour that’s most difficult in nature….the hour of screaming silence. It’s usually the first or second hour. After you’ve set up camp, ensured every anchoring knot of the tarp is secure, and when everyone else has gone off to hammock or breathe and pray for a good, long while. Then there’s yourself.
And settling into your own spot.
And listening to your own thoughts as they drown the soft sound of an alpine afternoon.
The rush, like a river finding a new edge to waterfall down.
Being still…
What is it to you? asks the wildflower, nodding at me. She’s smiling. Contented.
I look back at her—her bright, ombre-shaded body bobs in the sun. How delighted she is. Fully alive and fully known. Confident with the knowledge that she was made to simply be.
“For to me to live is Christ…” (Romans 8:21a)
God’s hand, His creative mind and perfected artistry made alive in a solitary, alpine flower. I smile back at her, reach out to touch her. Gently. I fill with gratitude that I have been given her presence….and my Creator’s voice through her. And I know that even if I had never been graced by her presence…even if she had never been seen by another human, she would have lived her life to the fullest. She would have glorified her God by simply being. By simply knowing Him.
Being still is a challenging discipline. Being still and knowing is action born in surrender. I think we often stop still at being still. We don’t know what to do once we get there, and so we find it uncomfortable—our desire for outward stimulation makes alien that place of inner life and questioning. When we are still, and only still, our own voices flood us. We choke. We feel ourselves drowning, and so we quickly depart—grasping the first distraction available. We forget that there’s an “and.”
…And know.
Fall is my favorite season. (As I believe you know from my past writings.) The world softens. My heart kindles awake. I find my golden aspen groves, my patches of eternity, and I lie down beneath the trees and feel…known.
It is my favorite feeling. Being known.
What I often forget is that it is God’s favorite feeling too.
He invites us to know Him. He calls us to know Him. He exhorts us to know Him. The story of the world is the story of knowing Him.
I watch my aspens play—their festival season begun—and they praise their God with every shimmer of their leaves. They know. They rest. They are alive in their purpose: to glorify.
How beautiful that we belong to a Savior who takes the time to touch us, to talk with us, to know us. How beautiful to belong to a Creator who wants me to know Him and all His ways, His heart, and His character in return.
I close my eyes and feel a leaf fall on my jacket. I hear the wind converse with the trees—telling them stories of where it’s been and what it’s seen, I’m sure. The trees nod their heads. Understanding. I know Jesus is there with me. He loves this place too. This feeling.
Who are you? I whisper.
It’s a question I’m learning to ask more often. A question I’m learning to love.
Because there’s always something more to know. To learn, to embrace, to act upon because of who God is.
He lives within me, after all. He created me to live through me…so that others might know Him too. If my life is, indeed, a chapter of the eternal story of Jesus Christ…might I not discover the deepest meaning, the most clarified answers, the most vibrant life in the One who this whole world is about?
It’s in being still and knowing that we find truth. In truth, we find our strength, our armor, our path forward, our next steps. Nature already knows this.
In the chaos of this world, in the distractedness of our minds, there is an invitation…a directive for us to follow, to accept and lean into: To be still. To know.
That God is with us.
“Get into the habit of saying; Speak, Lord, and life will become a romance.” — Oswald Chambers