The Lent Project | Day 21
Today’s Lent Project devotional is by Josh Lamm. He is a member of our Leadership Team and hosts one of the South Forsyth Table Groups, along with his wife, Kristen.
Last week was one of those weeks. You know the ones. Every night with heavy eyes you look at your clock and wish you were asleep. Every morning you wake up begging time to stand still for just ten more minutes of sleep. Running and running and running. Not much rest and definitely not any reflection. I am sad to admit that this has been my story of the past few weeks—continually depleting the bank while some deposits need to be made.
Then Sunday.
Sunday is a workday for me since I run sound at churches on a pretty regular basis. This week I woke up early just like any other Sunday. I tip-toed around the house trying not to wake my wife. It was 5:30 in the morning after all – who wants to be up if they don’t have to? As I quietly got ready I thought about how I would rather be asleep. I made a big cup of coffee, grabbed my things and made my way out the door. You could pretty much copy and paste that to most of my Sundays. But this one was going to be different and I had no idea. It wasn’t anything that I did, but a nice nudge in the right direction from Somebody who knew I needed it.
My drive to work should have been just a drive. I got in my car, reversed out of the driveway and was off. This Sunday I was too tired to turn on the radio or find anything to entertain my brain. I just sat and drove. As I was nearing my destination, I watched the sun begin to rise. Beams of light started to creep through the treetops and stretch across the sky. And all of a sudden, in that moment I felt rest. Not physical rest but spiritual rest.
Do you ever have trouble only seeing one side of something? Putting something into one category when it fits in many? I find myself trying to categorize everything into a box that’s easy for me to explain. I do this with God. I selfishly give Him labels or put Him into categories that will help me understand Him. It’s easy for me to understand the “all-powerful God”, the God of the grand gesture. I see the God who freed his people with a barrage of plagues, who led his people out of Egypt, protecting them with pillars of cloud and flame, and parted a sea to ensure their escape.
Too often, I forget about the God of the still small voice, who spoke through a bush to a shepherd tending his father in-law’s flock.
So many times when I feel far from God I search for the next parting of the sea moment, when what I really need is the still small voice. Lent is already half way over and I think I almost missed the train. I went into this season looking for the big moment when the very thing I needed was to be still, to praise God for the grace He has given me and create time for God to speak to me in small ways.
That’s why today’s reading from Psalms really leapt off the page for me, this verse in particular:
From the rising of the sun to it’s setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised. Psalm 113:3
This verse isn’t calling us to walk around all day with a boom box on our shoulder like Run DMC singing Tomlin songs at the top of our lungs. It’s a heart issue. We need to be positioning our hearts, finding those still moments to sit and let God speak to us. After all, what communicates more praise than saying, “You are worthy of my time?”
My journey through Lent this year has changed drastically. God forced a much-needed moment of spiritual rest on me. For the rest of this season I will not go a day, sunrise to sunset, without finding time to sit still with a heart expectant for a word from my Savior.
