Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Be still


Stop fighting. Stop trying to do it all yourself. Stop worrying; stop fretting; stop striving so hard. Be still. Calm. Patient. Trusting - and KNOWING that God is God - and you are not. Be still - He is in control. He has been. He will continue to be. He did not blink. He is not late. He is God.

This is not a mindless thing, not blanking yourself out. It doesn't mean clearing your mind of all thoughts, and it is not some new way to know God. It's not that when you are a blank, empty slate, that a new "knowing" of God will come upon you. No. It means stop everything that you are trying to do in your own strength. It means to stop despairing. Stop giving up. Stop letting Satan win. 


Just. Be. Still. Let GOD be God, because you are not and never will be. Know who He is. Know what He has done for you. "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32)

A "commentary" on this verse is in Psalm 37:5-8 -

Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him,
And He shall bring it to pass.
He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light,
And your justice as the noonday.
Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him;
Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way,
Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.
Cease from anger, and forsake wrath;
Do not fret—it only causes harm.

The New Living Translation says this in verse 7, which is very much a parallel to Psalm 46:10:
Be still in the presence of the Lord,
and wait patiently for Him to act.


Today, if events in your life seem to be spiraling out of your control, be still. Know that nothing is out of God's control. He's not only fully on top of the situation, but has it all planned out to work for your good. He is God. You are not. It's not your job to figure everything out. Nothing is impossible for God. Let HIM work it out.


Living in a 3D world


 This post has little spiritual insight, but it is so amazing to me that I have to share it. Did you realize that God designed your eyes to see depth? It is probably so common to you that your reaction to that statement is "Yeah, so?"

Think about it, though. With all our technology, we can't really capture what our eyes do on their own. The images we record with technology are flat. The only real way to see depth in a recorded image, currently (that I'm aware of, at least), is to wear special glasses. Or look through a  Viewmaster. Maybe virtual reality is totally 3D, but that's still with glasses on.

Your eyes do that all on their own, because that is how God made them.

I've worn contacts since I was 15. As I am currently 56, that's a very, very long time. I just had an eye appointment a couple of weeks ago, and the eye doctor (new to me) was astonished that I still wear contacts all day most days. I am lucky in that I do not have dry eyes at all. In fact, you can ask my friends, and they will attest that my eyes are pretty leaky. A subject for a different post.

My contacts are still comfortable for me, and that's great. However, the biggest reason I wear them is so that I can see well. My prescription is very strong, and that has a lot of drawbacks for glasses. Without any correction, I wouldn't even recognize you as human from across a room. That means, for me, there is no peripheral vision with my glasses. And that whole "near, far and in between" that you are supposed to be able to get with the right glasses? Doesn't work so well with me, probably because of my astigmatism. It's fine as long as my head is perfectly still, but as soon as I move, it's like being on the deck of a moving ship. Makes me sea sick as everything around me becomes a blur until I'm still again. Hard to walk that way.

So, I wear contacts (corrected for astigmatism) - but, like many people with a strong near-sighted prescription, that means I can't see close up. To compensate, I've had monovision since I was 35. One eye is powered to see in the distance and one eye is vastly underpowered to see close up. Many people's brains just can't handle that, but I've been lucky. I sew and make jewelry and just about any other craft you can think of, and seeing up close is important. Over the years, as my near-sighted prescription for my right eye has had to get stronger, the prescription for my left eye has had to get weaker for it to still work. Counter-intuitive, I know.

The drawback has been depth perception. To actually see depth, your eyes have to work together, and that is fairly impossible with eyes so unequally powered. But, your brain uses a lot of ways to determine depth. It's kind of like adding depth to a painting. Perspective, lighting, detail all work together to make some things "near" and other things "far." That's the way I've been seeing depth for so many years, that for me, it's just normal. I really hadn't noticed that my world had become flat.

Well, back to the eye appointment. This year, for the first time, I failed the depth perception test miserably. So much so that the eye doctor didn't think I was able to drive safely. I am fine driving, seriously (see the paragraph above), but I let him talk me into a pair of driving glasses that would undo my monovision. I'd wear them on top of my contacts, and really only in the car.

I picked them up a couple days ago, and OH. MY. GOODNESS. My world is 3D again! It's like living inside a Viewmaster! I came home from errands a few minutes ago, and it's like a whole new world opened up for me. I pulled into my driveway and couldn't stop staring at my crabapple tree and how the branches crisscrossed  each other. I could see the depth. Astonishing.

Makes me wonder how many other of God's gifts that we just take for granted in any given day. And, how much more will open up to us in resurrected bodies? I can't wait!

Thank, you, Lord, for the eyes that you created to see your world. 

Edit to add - hologram, I know. We can record a hologram. Still not as good as our own eyes, though.