As Spring blows in, attempting to finally loosen the tight grip of winter, my heart is cautious to come out from under the covers.
There’s something about the winter season that I have grown to love.
Or maybe it’s not the season that I’m learning to appreciate but a new kind of rhythm in my life. It’s a slow and steady rhythm of stillness and activity. Activity and stillness.
{Have you sensed this rhythm too?}
I’ve always liked activity. Activity is the go and do type of living. It marches ahead with a carefree confidence. Activity has a list. An agenda. A purpose.
Activity, I like.
It’s the stillness, however, that I’m beginning to long for – a quiet season of the soul.
I have to admit that at first this stillness felt like a trap to me. Sometimes stillness haunts me. I don’t like the things that emerge from the dark, quiet corners of my soul. But without the bells and whistles of activity, without the fan-fare, stillness draws out something of a miracle inside of me. Inside of each of us.
“A butterfly does not become the magnificent, colorful creature by a fury of activity. She submits to the confinement of the chrysalis – womb-like, tomb-like. She is still. She rests. She receives. She submits to a work more glorious than she could have ever conjured up for herself.“ (from Pilgrimage of a Soul)
It’s in submitting and receiving in the midst of the stillness that the miracle happens. A quiet mystery that we could never achieve on our own. A work of grace. Of Christ in us. Changing us.
But it’s a rhythm, remember.
I must resist the urge to try to create balance. I can’t map this thing out on my calendar. Instead, I simply learn to follow. In and out of seasons, I choose to embrace the sway.
And we dance.
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