🟆Some years back, at the regional assembly of the pacific Southwest region, we had as our preacher Rev. Lori Tapia, who is the National Pastor for Hispanic Ministries in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Her sermon stood out to me, because she introduced us to two Spanish words: saber and conocer.
Now, I knew from my study of Spanish that both saber and conocer mean “to know.”
If someone asks a question and I know the answer, I might use a form of the word saber. But if someone asks if I know a person, if I’ve met them and gotten to know them, then I’d use a form of the word conocer.
Two different ways of knowing.
Now, the way my mind works, I formed a little ranking of these two words. In my mind, as I learned the meaning of these words, I ranked “saber” higher than “conocer.” It was stronger, I thought. Better. To know an answer, I thought, was better than just being familiar with someone.
Just like the word “good” is good but the word “great” is even better. There’s a ranking. Great is a stronger, more emphatic form of good. Saber, I thought, was a better way of knowing than conocer.
But Pastor Lori changed all that.
It’s been awhile, but I think the gist of her sermon went something like this:
A person can know all about God. A person can know all about the Bible. A person can have hundreds of verses memorized and be ready with an answer to almost any question anyone has about God.
That’s saber.
I gained a lot of this type of knowledge in seminary. We studied scripture, and commentaries, and we wrote lots and lots of essays explaining what we knew about the Bible.
But that’s not the same as knowing God in one’s heart. Knowing God in one’s heart means feeling passion for the things God is passionate about. Knowing God in one’s heart is feeling and experiencing the love God has for you. Knowing God in one’s heart is being in awe of the goodness of God, experiencing God in a way that really is impossible to put into words.
That’s conocer.
Pastor Lori’s sermon made me realize two things:
One: I had underestimated the power of the Spanish word conocer.
Two: I had underestimated the importance of knowing God in one’s heart…
Through the psalmist, God says: “Be still and know that I am God.”
This is more than a saber-kind of knowing. It’s more than just knowing about God. Even the devil knows about God.
But knowing with one’s heart— that’s an intimate awareness of who God is; it’s experiencing God’s presence in your life.
I know a lot about God. But how well do I know God with my heart? That’s the question Pastor Lori’s sermon made me ask myself…
How well do we know God? How can we know God better?
The two types of knowing are not completely exclusive. For me, knowing about God helps me know God. And I always try to keep my mind open, so that I’m always ready to learn something new about God.
Many of the things I know about God do inspire me, and help me know God in my heart a little better.
But it isn’t necessary to know everything about God to know God—which is good, because I don’t think one can know everything about God. God is always bigger than we can imagine.
One of the definitions of God we learned in seminary came from Anselm, who said: “God is that than which nothing greater can be thought.” And even that is an inadequate definition, because it limits God to what humans are capable of thinking or imagining. We can never know everything about God. Like Moses, all we have is a partial view, a partial understanding.
But the psalmist suggests another way to know God in your heart, in your soul. And that is to be still.
Be still, and know.
🟆 The problem is, it’s so hard to be still. The world around us is not still; the world around us pushes us to move faster and faster.
It’s like when I go for a hike. Sometimes, I want to see how fast I can get to my destination. “Ooh, I did three miles in less than an hour!”
But other times, I like to stop and examine the wildflowers, and listen to the birds and the breeze.
Can you really know the place where you are hiking if you don’t listen to the birds or examine the flowers?
The one time my family went to Walt Disney World, after the 2013 General Assembly, we had only two days. One of those days we spent at Epcot, which is just a huge park.
We tried to do it all. We ran from place to place. At one point, we split up, because we wanted to do different things, and there just wasn’t enough time to do everything everyone wanted to do.
It was exhausting.
Then we met up in the evening for dinner, and, later, to watch the fireworks.
We found a place beside the lagoon with a good view. We had about a half hour to wait—the first time we really stopped rushing all day.
And I remember it was raining lightly.
Some flashes of lightning could be seen way off in the distance as the sky grew darker. The lightning never came our way, and watching it from across the lagoon was really quite lovely.
And we talked about our day. And took some deep breaths. And waited for the show to start.
And that half hour of waiting, I realized, was the first opportunity I had all day to just take it all in. I had been running around all day, trying to know Epcot by doing as much as I could. But this was the first moment I had to really be present, be still, and know…what was going on. To take stock of my emotions, my impressions of the day; to really be present with my family… because it was the first time all day we were just still.
And that is the memory I hold on to most from that day.
It’s so hard to be still…
🟆 In Psalm 46, you may have noticed the word selah. Scholars aren’t completely sure what that word means. It appears in many of the psalms, and appears to be a musical instruction of some sort.
Maybe it means that at this point, there is to be a musical interlude. For a congregation reciting the psalm out loud, together, this could be a moment when the congregation is supposed to be still, be quiet, and listen.
We need to be told when to be still and listen, because for many of us, that doesn’t come naturally.
When I worked at a boy scout camp, teaching nature and ecology to boy scouts, one of the merit badges I taught was the Environmental Science merit badge. And to get the environmental science merit badge, a scout must sit quietly and observe nature for a designated amount of time.
Back then, the requirement was for 8 hours spent in observation, divided up into 4
2-hour segments.
Well, I guess it’s unreasonable to make scouts sit still that long, and these days, the amount of time required has been cut drastically.
It’s so hard to be still…
But what I discovered is that the mind is like a pot full of water. You stir the water with a spoon, and the water starts swirling around; but when you stop stirring, the water keeps moving.
When you sit, whether it’s to pray or to meditate or just to observe what’s going on around you, it’s hard, because even though the body has stopped moving, the mind still isn’t still; it's still swirling around; and it’s tempting to give up.
And sitting still, but looking at your phone, or watching TV, doesn’t count. Staring at your phone or watching TV keeps the water swirling. Your body may be still, but your mind is not.
🟆 But if you sit still long enough—still in body and mind—the swirling will start to slow down, and then you will hear the songs of the birds with your heart as well as with your ears; and you will see the colors and shapes of the flowers and the trees with your heart as well as with your eyes.
And if you sit still long enough—even though it may have been hard to be still at first, now you find it hard to break the stillness, and to get up, and start moving again.
Because the water has finally stopped swirling.
And if, like Elijah, you recognize that God is in the stillness, then you realize that God is there present with you, and has been all along, except things were swirling around so much in your mind that you hadn’t noticed… not until you were still and allowed the swirling to stop did you become aware of the nearness of God.
And in that nearness, in the awareness of that presence, there is peace. There is calm. There is serenity.
This scripture—Psalm 46—is the scripture for the first day of camp. The challenge, as I think about it, is: How do we get our kids to be still long enough to know God in their heart?
As I said, the world around us is not still. I think that’s especially true for young people. There’s always a pressure to go faster and faster.
The world is changing so much. No other generation has ever experienced the amount of change as is now taking place…technological changes… changes in religion…changes that we’re still dealing with five years after the pandemic…changes in the climate…all on top of all that, there’s the changes young adolescents are experiencing in their own bodies and their own mental and emotional development.
The changes that we all are experiencing are enough to shake the mountains!
Yet in all this, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.
And if we find the time to be still, the truth of that verse will enter into our hearts, and we will know God and we will know God’s peace.
As I was working on this sermon, I discovered that Martin Luther wrote the hymn “A Mighty Fortress” after reading Psalm 46. It was a time of many challenges for him. He was afraid and overwhelmed. Doubts crept into his heart and his mind. And he felt alone.
But then he read this psalm, and reflected on it, and found it to be true.
And he was no longer afraid.
Many are afraid of where this world is going. There are economic worries, and fears about the collapse of the climate, and sheer terror at the stripping away of rights and protections for some of the most vulnerable members of society.
The time in which we live is every bit as tumultuous as the time in which Martin Luther lived, and we experience much of the same doubt and anxiety that he felt.
Maybe the problem, as the prophet Hosea lamented, is that the people do not know God. We do not know God, and therefore we have been separated from the source of our strength, the source of our peace, the one who can calm our fears and comfort our troubled souls.
Be still and know God.
Be still and know that God loves you.
Be still and know that God loves the whole world.
Be still and know that God is love.
Be still and know that God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Be still, and know.
No comments:
Post a Comment