As we go through life and journey with the Lord, our lives should begin to increasingly transform so that we look more like the Lord than we did when we first started walking with Him. He uses many tools to help bring about that transformation, some of them are needed because we do not yield to His whispers or we continue in the busyness of this life repeating persistent habits. Some are needed because we fail to see who we are or could be.

 

Solitude is one of the avenues that can help us face ourselves.

 

“Solitude is the furnace of transformation…(it) is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter – the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.” Henri Nouwen

 

It can be easier to continue with the false self than we would like to admit. Our desires to please and receive the approval of others lead us to put on the garments we believe will succeed to that end, to use all manner of adornment in order to hide the flaws still present in our character. We can be so effective doing it over time that we can be deceived into believing those things are who we truly are.

 

In the recesses of our mind and heart that part of us that knows the truth of our disguise, cringe in shame to even consider spending time in solitude with the Lord. We know those trappings do not fool Him.

 

We get into deeper trouble because we try to do more and more to distract ourselves from discovering the truth. That adds to our dilemma because we lose all sense of who we are if we are not doing. We can stay stuck in doing for many reasons including how often our brothers and sisters nudge us to stay involved and perhaps do even more.

 

To risk abandoning this routine means we must be willing to believe we can be safe in the Lord’s presence. We have believed for so long that humankind will reject or shame us for our failures that we can project that view onto the Lord as well. I love how Ruth Haley Barton defines this:

 

“This willingness to see ourselves as we are and to name it in God’s presence is at the very heart of the spiritual journey. But it takes time; time to feel safe enough with ourselves and with God, to risk exposing the tender, unfinished places of the soul. We are so accustomed to being shamed or condemned in the unfinished parts of ourselves that it is hard to believe there is a place where all of who we are – the good, the bad and the ugly – will be handled with love and gentleness. Solitude is just such a place, but it takes time to learn to trust it.”

 

 Our challenge is to lay aside the experience we may have had with a friend, family member, or ministry leader that we entrusted with those “unfinished places” who responded in ways that wounded us even either through ignorance or self-righteousness. Such experiences tended to result in retreating deeper into the shadows or driving ourselves even harder.

 

It can be easy for us to believe this sort of journey is unique to us, but if we take time to consider what we see in God’s Word we discover many examples of others (heroes of the faith) who have made similar journeys. We see it in David as well as in Paul (to name just two.)

 

At the very least we need to remember that God is good (as the beavers told Lucy in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe of the Narnia stories) even if we cannot see Him as safe.

 

Consider the words of Robert Mulholland in Invitation to a Journey:

 

“The process of being conformed to the image of Christ takes place primarily at the point of our unlikeness of Christ’s image. God is present to us in the most destructive aspects of our cultural captivity. God is involved with us in the most imprisoning bondage of our brokenness. God meets us in those places of our lives that are most alienated from God.”

 

 

This week there has been a good bit of attention paid to the moon. This “Blue Moon” is called a “supermoon” because it is a full moon and its super close proximity to the earth. When two full moons occur in the same month, the second one is called a “Blue Moon.” As a result of the lunar eclipse on January 31 and the occurrence of the “Blue Moon” on that date as well. It is three in one – a supermoon Blue Moon total eclipse. The last super “Blue Moon” total lunar eclipse happened December 30, 1982.

 

Scientists will be busy studying both events in order to learn more about this universe we live in. There is no doubt these studies will prove fascinating. No matter how much detail they will gain from their study, however, nothing can compare with experiencing it.

 

Learning about nearly anything can be stimulating and it’s a grand gift to have a mind and the capacity to learn and keep on learning. We learn in so many different ways that it seems God has equipped us for learning.

 

Learning at its best means experiencing. I once heard said, “Are you living life or only reading about it?” It was a strong admonition to experience living.

 

How true that is in our relationship with the Lord as well. Study is needed, good, and blesses us in so many ways. Each time I open my Bible I discover something new even though I have read it many times. But this week as I have been considering the gifts of silence, I read an illustration that expressed the difference between knowing something and experiencing it.

 

“In silence we begin to recognize that a lot of our God-talk is like the finger that points to the moon. The finger that points to the moon is not the moon. Pointing to the moon, talking about the moon, involving ourselves in the study and explanation about how the light of the moon is generated is not the same thing as sitting in the moonlight, letting moonbeams fall around us illuminating what they will. It is not the same thing as noticing how everything is transformed in this numinous light. When we sit in the light of the moon, we don’t try to figure it out, explain it, or force it to be anything other than what it is. We just enjoy sitting in the midst of it.” Ruth Haley Barton

 

What would you discover of God by simply sitting in silence in His presence?

 

We seldom take time to do that. Oh, yes, we are busy and doing it would require we cease our busyness, but the idea of simply sitting in His presence with no agenda, no requests or even praises and allowing Him to be who He is can be intimidating. We have no control. We must let go of the noisiness inside, the self-talk, the “to do” lists, and even our view of God. We let Him speak if He chooses, but we simply rest in His presence.

 

Silent retreats are often used to get away from the demands of life for an extended time of stillness. Even if we participate in one of these, it does not happen with enough frequency to sustain us. To experience Him like experiencing the moonlight will require a thirst and desire that leads us to make room for Him wherever we are so that we can become alive to His presence within us.

 

In Telling Secrets Frederick Buechner (an author I love) addresses what plagues us:

 

“What deadens us most to God’s presence within, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are engaged in within ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort than being able from time to time to stop that chatter, including the chatter of spoken prayer.”

 

Scripture often exhorts us to be still. Examples can be found in Zechariah 2:13, Psalm 46:10-11, and Habakkuk 2:20. I especially love the first part of Psalm 46:10 where the psalmist says, “Be still, and know that I am God…”

 

 We can all imagine what it might look like to be “still”, but it’s significant to consider that the Hebrew translation for “be still” means to “Let go of your grip.” That deepens the understanding of “still”. It speaks of surrender.

 

What would it be like to surrender to His presence?

 

Perhaps sitting in the moonlight and allowing the moonbeams to touch us can remind us.