A Word to Live Into

An old song refrain came to mind as I thought about the word ‘stay’: “Should I stay or should I go?”

By this time of year, you may want to go away from the goals, intentions, or plans you made when the new year started.” Stay with yourself. Stay with your best thoughts. Stay with your good goal or with the thing you need to do. As the old saying goes - stay the course.

It is not only resolutions that may prompt us to go. There seems to be something in us that wants what’s better, bigger, more. There is something in us that imagines the grass is always greener. We are drawn to the new and improved version in products, lifestyles, or in ourselves. We also wish the world could be something else - a place where justice rolls down like rivers, with better leaders, with a better life. The problem is, this desire to go to something more and better distracts us from what we already have.

There are times when we need to go, but much of our life happens as we stay. We have to live where we actually are. As we do, it is easy to get distracted. There are lots of things to do where we are. There are lots of voices telling us what to do and how we are to be where we are. There are pressures to face, and the realness of reality can make life hard, yet at the same time, as we stay, we can grow and flourish.

As we stay, we wait and trust.

Throughout the Bible, we see the image of a watchman. It is the watchman’s job to stay. He is still and still moving. He is watching and waiting. He is attentive to his surroundings and ready to respond. He is receptive yet decisive, understanding where to focus his attention.

I love a verse from Psalm 133: “From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised.” (v3) I am struck by the word place. You can watch and wait for the sun to rise each morning in the place where you are. You don’t have to go to the next town. You don’t have to do something or have something to get the sun to rise. But there is more. The sun comes and stays, then it sets in that place. Right where you are. All the activities of a day take place under the sun. We are part of something bigger than ourselves. There is more than one reality in the place where you are.

We live in this world and are in the kingdom of God. God is here and at work. He makes the sun rise and set in the place where you are. His ways unfold in the quiet work of grace and love. God is patient, kind, all-powerful, and personal. God may be with you in a way that is different from the way that God is with me. As sure as the sun rises and sets, we can trust that God is with us. Watch and wait.

As we stay, we can become rooted.

You may be familiar with spiritual practices such as fasting and prayer. Are you familiar with the practice of stability? Benedictine monks intentionally practice stability. To be stable is to stay where you are rather than constantly seek more. As a spiritual practice, stability is about your place  - both outwardly and inwardly. Like the monks, you live in a particular place with a particular community of people. Staying in that place with those people gives you stability. As they live in a stable community, the monks seek to live rooted in God.

The practice of stability reminds us that our outer lives reflect our inner lives. If we are rooted inwardly, we are more stable outwardly in our work, our routines, and our posture in life. To be stable is to stay, knowing that God is with you, and at work, right where you are.

“One sure mark of genuine spiritual growth,” said Thomas Green, “ is a growing preference for the ordinary days of our life with God. We gradually begin to realize that it is when nothing seems to be happening that the most important things are really taking place.” (1)

It is like the mustard seed. It is tiny, yet as it stays in the soil where it is planted, roots begin to form. After some weeks, a shoot appears above ground. In time, it will become a great tree that provides shelter and delight for the birds. Similarly, as we stay and seek the power of life found in God, our roots will grow, and with God’s help, we may even be a delight to the birds and others.

How to live into the word stay.

1. Stay with God awhile. When asked what he did in prayer, St. Francis replied: “I look at him, and He looks at me.” (2)

2. A practice to try: Stay in one place. Notice God where you are. (God is everywhere - you may notice God in nature, in the quiet, in people reflecting His heart, in the Bible, in the stirring of your heart….)

3. Take a hymn lyric as your prayer this month: “Be near me Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay”  From Away in a Manger, or pray John 15:4 - "Remain in me Jesus, as I also remain in You."

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1. Thomas Green, When the Well Runs Dry

2. Fr. Leonard Boase attributed this to St. Francis in The Prayer of Faith. Marjorie Thompson attributes it to an elderly peasant in Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life.