Sacred Stillness: Finding the Pause Button

by Pastor Gina Johnson

How many of you have wished that you had a pause button that could pause life? I tend to be that person who likes a full plate and a full plate comes with a lot of noise to go with it.

I remember one of the first times when I was getting my undergrad and I took my first independent studying class and the professor gave us a ton of work but no deadlines and I thought to myself. “You just want it all by the end of class. We have all these weeks to do that. Where is the pressure? Where is the. ‘I want it by this day’?” He gave us freedom to choose our writing style. and he didn't even care so much about our word count as long as we covered what we were supposed to be talking about. And we had to get our final project approved. but everything along the way was whatever we wanted.

There wasn't enough pressure. There wasn't enough busyness. You just gave me six weeks to do something where I want you in my face saying. “Now.” so I can throw it on my plate with all of the other noise. the children and working and church. I wanted it to come at me full speed and it didn't and I thought throughout that entire class. “What kind of professor does this? He's not giving us any deadlines.” And I remember a couple of my classmates saying. “ Gina. this is nice. You can do it at your own pace. If you want to get the whole thing done now. then you can just get it all done.

I thought. “Ew. What if I get it all done and then I don't have things to do?”

Another story that I think I've shared with you all before is when I worked at the Methodist Church. It was my first actual vocational church job. I started off as an intern and then I got hired on and I remember I had to establish a new account with one of the children's programs we were using. The children's director came over to me and she said, “Your account's all set up. I even wrote down your password. It’s sitting there on a piece of paper.”

I said, “Great,” and I went and I started putting in my login. I looked at the password and it said, “Be still six.”

I thought, “Very funny.”

She was always telling me, “Gina, you don't know how to be still. Psalm 46:10: be still and know that I am God.” And I'm thinking, “You are 13 years younger than me. Don't talk to me about being still.”

But it's amazing how we get so used to those moments, even those moments where we feel overwhelmed, even those moments where we're running from one thing to the next. They become a part of our behavior. We have a seasoned congregation and one thing that I've heard from people here, just like every other congregation as wel, is that after retirement life gets busier. Is this true? Life gets busier after retirement. Well, let's stop calling it retirement. I'm not even sure I believe in that anymore.

It's amazing that, in the day and age that we live in, we start to think that more is more. Fuller plates are the way to go. Extra noise is the way to be and many of us will fill every single gap of our lives with noise. Raise your hand if you're always listening to music, podcasts, TV, social media, endless conversations, running errands and to-do lists. You don't have to raise your hand, but I'm sure some of you are like, “Yes. Yes. Yes.” And maybe others of you are like, “No, Gina, I don't engage in those things,” but if I were to look at your list over here. How many things would be on that list?

In Psalm 46:10, Jesus understood something that we often forget and that is those intentional pauses need to take place because if you don't take those intentional pauses, you are going to be consumed by the noise of the world. The first point that I want to make is embracing finding that pause button.

The noise of the world is going to drown out the voice of God. When I walked in the sanctuary the first Sunday of Lent, I stood in the back and I looked up at the chancel area and I saw how beautifully simple it looked. Anyone who knows our Worship Chair, Guy, knows you give him a theme, a holiday, a challenge to make something look extraordinary and consider it done and done. If you serve on one of his committees, you better tag him down and ask where you can help, otherwise, he's going to get in there and get it all done in the snap of a finger and it's amazing. I walked in that morning and there wasn't a, “What? This is the start of Lent. Where's all the decorations?”

There was actually this, “How did he read my mind?” And when I went and talked to him about it, he told me he took away all the extras because going into Lent, it's good to start this way, empty of everything but what is necessary. That's my paraphrase, but he exactly read my thoughts. What a beautiful serene place to walk into and find that pause.

Many of us have lost the ability to sit in the quiet stillness. I know for me, I used to have this fear and it was, if I entered into the stillness, am I going to hear the Spirit tell me something more I have to do when I really don't have room, and if I clear a portion off my plate, I already have something planned to go there. So, I didn't want to sit in the stillness because what if God decides to ask me to do more and I can't say no. I didn't want to sit in the stillness because I thought, “What if I enter into the stillness and instead of hearing God's voice. I hear that voice that I disguise as God's voice and it's saying, ‘You're not doing this correctly and you haven't done enough of that.’”

The second reason was that fear of being condemned, of being pointed out every place. I still hadn't grown, so, who wants to visit the silence and hear a message of condemnation and you're not good enough.

The third reason that I didn't want to go into the silence, and probably the strongest reason, was what if in the silence I couldn't hear God? What if I entered into the silence and it was a moment where I really needed God's guidance and for whatever reason, all I could hear were the swirling thoughts in my mind. All I could hear were those fake voices of inadequacy. All I could hear were those voices demanding more out of me and I couldn't hear the genuine voice of the Spirit.

So, I can understand why people do not like to pause at times. We like to mistake activity for intimacy with God and so I'd like to invite you all for a moment to participate in an activity with me. Turn on your television, your radio, your noisy appliances and fans. Do you hear the noise? As the noise gets louder with each thing we turn on, it's amazing how our own thoughts, our own voice gets quieter and quieter. Can you hear those familiar sounds? What is that? The sound of chores? The sound of traffic? Is that the sound of running? Is that the sound of the rushing of the wind? Is that the rushing of your mind. After a while, can you hear anything?

Isn’t that what life can be like at times? It starts off where you hear one thing and then you hear another and another and another and you start to wonder, “Wait is this outside of me? Is this within me? Is this in my mind? Is this in my soul? Now I'm feeling it in my body.”

It's a world full of distractions and noise and it gets to be really intense. I remember my friend Elijah from the book of Kings, a mighty extravagant prophet, and he had a moment where he was trying to find God, where he was trying to hear the voice of God and so

He went out and stood on the mountain before the Lord and the Lord was about to pass by. There was a great wind so strong that it was splitting the mountains and breaking the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind and after the wind, an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake and after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire and after the fire, a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.

God was not in the wind. He was not in the earthquake. He was not in the fire. He was not in all of that noise that we were just sitting through. He was in the silence, in the stillness. Now I'm going to ask you to engage with me in another exercise. I want to invite you to set a timer for 15 seconds and sit with me in silence.

Were you able to experience silence in 15 seconds? How did that feel? Were you uncomfortable? Did you take any time to find some deeper thoughts or were you too busy counting in your mind and wondering how long will this take place? Were you too concerned about what other people were doing around you? How often in the silence of our homes do we get to that moment, whether it's in our bedroom or out at our garden or just in a place where we find stillness, and we are too busy still playing the concerns of the world in our minds?

You know in church when we get invited to spend those moments in meditation, especially when they're short like that, I have to tell you when I'm sitting in the pew, it takes me a good 30 seconds just to tell myself to be quiet, to stop asking how long is this going to last? Why is he or she doing this right now? Is this really the right time for us to engage in silence? Is everyone else being silent? Are their eyes closed? Can I look around and see people?

It's amazing because sitting in silence, whether it's in a congregation, whether it's in our car, whether it's at home, it's not the easiest thing to do, but when we do it, it can change our perspective. It can start to shift our mind, our body and our spirit in so many different ways.

You know Jesus modeled for us the sacred pause. Before he made big decisions, before he faced certain circumstances that were catalysts in his life and in our life, he paused. It reads in the scripture in Luke 6: 12 and 13 that Jesus spent that evening in prayer before the next day when he called his disciples, and we also are very familiar with the garden of Gethsemane, where he said to his disciples, “You all stay here while I go and pray.” he knew what was ahead of him and it was in that garden moment, where in the stillness and in the silence, he was able to cry out and cry out and though he didn't hear a response, he felt the response of knowing in that stillness, that “let my father's will be done.”

If we can't plug into that same stillness, it's hard to find the clarity. It’s hard to find the motivation to let the father's will be done, let alone even know what his will is. If we can't enter the silence, how do we even know what is that expectation of us and, I hesitate in using the word expectation because stillness is not about doing, it's not about doing nothing and just checking out saying, “Here we go. This is stillness. Bleh.”

No. Stillness is about creating a space where you feel aligned, where you feel in tune, where all the noise and distractions around you are silent and divine clarity comes in. That’s what it's about to be in stillness.

Have you ever tried to hear someone whispering something to you when you've been in a crowded place? I know there's a lot of times where I've been at a concert or even when I've watched Ohmi and show choir and I want to lean over and say something to one of my other children and I have to say it two or three times. I find it easier just to be quiet.

Imagine that crowded stadium and you have something to say. Well, you know God is always speaking but sometimes the stadium noise is not quiet enough for us to hear.

There's another teacher that I'd like to introduce you to and his name is Lao Tzu. He is an ancient Chinese philosopher and he's a founder of Taoism. One of the things that he emphasized was the wu wei, which is the practice of effortless action. It wasn't about being passive as much as it was about aligning yourself with the flow of life, aligning yourself with the Spirit so whatever comes through your way, you will navigate it with smooth sailing instead of getting caught up in the storms around you.

He taught that wisdom and understanding doesn't come from striving but from stillness and allowing. Have you ever been working on a project and you've been working on it countless hours and you're just like, “You know what? I just need to take a break,” and so you put it down and you walk away. Maybe you have a drink or a snack. Maybe you go listen to a song. Maybe you go make a phone call, but you come back to it and something in that pause allowed you fresh eyes and fresh energy.

I know I love working on puzzles and I'm pretty much a puzzle master, expert, fast mover. But it's funny, I get to those points where you're working on like the sky and every single piece looks the same and they all have the same shape and you're like, “Oh! There's a special little nook. I bet I know where that piece goes,” and then you find three other pieces with a special little nook and curve, right? But then sometimes I walk away.

I take one more look at it and then I walk away and I just allow my mind to find that quiet. Then I pop over randomly and it's like, “Ah! Here goes a piece. Here goes a piece.”

You know, Lao Tzu, he talked about the power of silence that comes when you are just in observation and you are trusting in the unfolding that is taking place. His quote says do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?

You’ve seen those jars full of muddy water people use for illustrations. They shake them up and they set them down and they just wait for it to clear and, depending on what kind of sediment is in there and what's going around, some things will go down right away while other things you'll see it go from a dark brown to a lighter brown to a yellow and maybe a day later everything has settled and sometimes it happens faster. Are you able to pause long enough to let the mud settle, to let the dirt and the rocks and the noise and the distractions settle? Lao Tzu would tell you that you're only going to find the clarity, you're only going to find the inspiration, the ability to move forward, when you allow the mud to settle, but if we force our decisions, then we will start to push forward with anxiety, with quick answers that may not be the right answers. But if we allow the mud to settle, then we can find the discernment that the Spirit so deeply wants us to have.

When we find the pause button, it gives us that opportunity to reconnect ourselves with God. How many of you believe what the world is still trying to convince us, that busyness is the badge of honor, that the longer to-do list, especially when those boxes are checked off, that's what it means to have success? How much have you done this week? You know I was riding on the way to church one morning with Ohmi and I stopped I said, “Wow, we've done a lot in this past week,” and you know every week is a busy week when you have five children living nearby, but I'll tell you what that week stood out to me because the Sunday before we had this great celebration and then from there we had our pancake supper, I did multiple things the children, Dorothea had a concert, I made a couple trips of Warrensburg to see Isabella. It was just amazing the different things that took place. We had a storm come in and then we had days of beautiful weather and I'm only talking about maybe a couple handfuls of things. I was barely touching the surface of that past week.

How many of you all can relate? How many of you all have been stuck in one day, so the next day it felt like your to-do list multiplied? It's amazing what happens in a week, in a day, in an hour, in a moment. Instead of living in any other moment, instead of regretting or instead of anticipating the future, why don't we just find an opportunity to be in that moment? And when that moment is loud and distracting, rather annoying sometimes, pressuring, why don't we find that pause button and step away from that moment?

My challenge for you this week is to understand what Jesus was modeling for us to understand, what Lao Tzu was saying to us, to recognize that true wisdom, true ability, true clarity is found in the stillness. Jesus spent a lot of time out alone in prayer, in fasting, in contemplation just so he could move with the Spirit’s leading.

How many of us are taking the time to do that? I want to encourage you that as we are embarking on the season of Lent this is a great time to remember who we are, to feel empowered by the spirit's presence, to receive discernment and clarity on what is to come next. Let's not just celebrate the resurrection of Christ Jesus, let us celebrate the resurrection of ourselves and let's begin that with a moment of silence. Allow me to close with this story.

There was a conductor who was instructing his orchestra to play a beautiful symphony, but he hid a little surprise within it. The symphony was playing and it sounded outstanding and everyone was caught up in it and feeling the music within their body, the vibration, the energy. They were just captivated and then all of a sudden it was silent.

You see the conductor had instructed that there should be a long pause of silence right after the height of it all and as the people sat there and were met suddenly by stillness it was in that moment that many of them say the music was the most powerful. It was in that surprising moment of stillness and silence where they heard the symphony more clearly, more loudly, and felt it unlike any other piece. I invite you to step into the silence and feel the power of that song of clarity and divinity that's been written for you. Please pray with me.

Our father mother God, our creator of all, we give you thanks. We give you thanks for the noise, the distractions, the busyness, because they remind us that we always have access to the silence. We give you thanks for being with us within the noise and within the silence and we ask that you would continue to mold us and shape us, to turn us inward, that we are able to be in the silence through all areas of life, that we are able to confidently and calmly navigate the waters when they are still, when they are rough, when the wind is calm, and when the wind is harsh, and we turn to you, Spirit. We turn to you, Jesus, and we say, “Thank you.” Thank you for modeling the pause. Thank you for instilling that small voice within us. Thank you for creating us within a place of beauty and silence. It's in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.