Do nothing but nothing

Maybe I’m a heretic, maybe I stray too far from home, maybe my actions and inactions betray a deep lack of faith – or maybe not….

I’m learning – slowly – to read between the lines, to understand and appreciate the empty spaces. I’m learning to allow my faith to be organic; listening to my inner voice, my breath, my heartbeat and hearing God through, beyond, beneath, and in my very core. Often I demand too much of myself. Forcing habits and disciplines that are not my own, that only serve to stymie my growth, make my steps stumble and pause from the path that I am walking. Sure, there are times when I need to try new disciplines, to force myself to read, pray, meditate, to practice the “habits of the heart.” But as I look back, it is in the times of no discipline, the moments of “laziness”, the times when I just can’t open the Bible and read, the times when prayers seem so far from my lips, that I find I have grown the most. I’m just coming out of such a time. I feel closer to God – and self – than I ever have. I also feel more alive, more attune to everything and everyone around me. I feel that I breathe the very breath of God and that all of my activity and inactivity is exactly what I should be doing.

I wonder if maybe this is really Sabbath? The forced Sunday moments of doing nothing usually only make me bored (unless I really need a nap). However, when I do need Sabbath I am starting to recognize it and welcome it. I am beginning to allow myself moments, days, weeks, months to take it.

Heretical? I don’t think so. I need these periods of inactivity so that what I “know” can become a part of me, soak into my every fiber, merging with my DNA, living in me.

Wandering too far away from home? Perhaps. But growth for me usually only happens when I am willing to be stretched, pushed, pulled, dragged, or when I get hopelessly lost from where I think I need to be. It is only then that I discover I am exactly where I am supposed to be! Maybe I was lost when I thought I knew exactly where I was and where I was going?

I wonder if most of Christendom is not suffering from a similar lost-ness. I wonder if sometimes our confidence and busyness keep us from going where God wants to take us. I wonder of our disciplines have become bad habits that keep us trapped in an unhealthy spiritual place, rooting us in who we are, not letting us become who God wants us to be?

Lack of faith? Absolutely not. Perhaps my lack of confidence in myself only serves to force me to trust God in the moments when I have no clue. Yes, it is uncomfortable not knowing what is going on in my “spiritual life”, my “walk with God”. It may be cliché, but, I am slowly coming to realize that I don’t need to know where I am going as long as I know who is taking me there. As Americans we want to know the answers, we want to know the time, we want to know the destination, we want to know the facts; we just want to know! I fear that is the same for Americans who are Christians. However, often we don’t know, can’t know, and shouldn’t know – and that should be OK. Why do we have to have – or make up – answers for things that only God can know? Why can’t we be comfortable in mystery? Why can’t we allow ourselves and others to marinate in what God is doing in our lives without filling it with more, more, more, more? Sometimes I think we know too much to be able to use what we have learned.

My son was diagnosed with Mono last week. This week he is reluctantly resting. The problem is, he doesn’t feel bad. After a nap, or an extended stay on the sofa he is ready to get up and do something. But he can’t. We make him rest. He asked the doctor what he could do to get well. He wanted to know what pill he could take that would make him better. She told him he could do nothing to get well. She said, “Just rest. Rest when you feel you need it. Rest when you feel like you could play. For a whole month do nothing but nothing.”

Wow.

There are times that my busyness, my work for God, my involvement in “good things”, makes me spiritually sick. There are times when I need to “do nothing but nothing” and allow God to “do” in me – to heal me, to teach me, to work in me, to “become” in my very soul, to take me where God knows I should be going, to change my direction, to move me in quantum leaps beyond where my busyness has kept me.

So don’t be surprised if I tell you to “quit” sometime soon. It’s good advice. Quit! Stop! Do “nothing but nothing”! Allow God to do the work in you while you wait as long as it takes. Through the “nothing”, you may find what you were really looking for all along!