To be or not to be: that is the question

We are all very good and proficient at being busy: busy at home, busy at work, in our communities, helping others; generally busy in body, heart and mind. The church is no exception to the rule: the church as a whole gets incredibly busy, especially in the changing seasons.

Holy scripture, however, reminds us that we are also called in our daily lives to be still. In Psalm 46 verse 10 says ‘be still and know that I am God’.

What a challenge for us all—but equally what an opportunity too. The invitation to be still is to know of our true worth before God. We are more important than what we do or don’t do, or how busy we are. God truly understands the danger that when we become too busy in life, we forget that life is a gift, life is precious and so often it is too easy to become distracted and forget who we are and importantly who we are before God.

The invitation to ‘be still and know that I am God’ is to stop, to take a breath and pause for moments across the day. It means, as we would with a friend, to sit with God, to quietly wait upon Him and listen to God speak with us. There, in stillness, is a real opportunity to re-connect with who we are as individuals, in belonging to a community and in having our place in the wider world. Moments to align ourselves and our wills with the Will of God, knowing we are truly precious, loved and valued by God, as created beings and God wants us to know this our true worth.

In the month of November we think a lot about the value and worth of human life as we approach Remembrance Day. It is the time we do stop and count the cost of those precious lives lost in the two world wars and from recent and current conflicts. Remembrance Day is a day we stand still in silence together, in remembrance, in love and respect for the self-giving and sacrifice of so many in winning the freedom we so enjoy today.

The invitation from scripture to be still is to know of God’s presence with us every day, in busy or in quiet, in turbulence or in peace, in grief and in joy. For God so loves the world that he would never abandon nor forsake us, but willingly chooses to come to us in his Son Jesus Christ, that we might know him and live our lives through him.

Rev. Gemma Turner
Visiting Priest