To Stop Running

I Want to Stop Running

Eternal God, you are a song amid silence,
a voice out of quietness,
a light out of darkness,
a Presence in the emptiness,
a coming out of the void.
You are all of these things and more.
You are mystery that encompasses meaning,
meaning that penetrates mystery.
You are God.
I am man.
I strut and brag.
I put down my fellows
and bluster out assertions of my achievements.
And then something happens:
I wonder who I am, and if I matter.
Night falls,
I am alone in the dark and afraid.
Someone dies,
I feel so powerless.
A child is born,
I am touched by the miracle of new life.
At such moments I pause . . .
to listen to a song amid silence,
a voice out of stillness,
to look for a light out of darkness.
I want to feel a Presence in the emptiness.
I find myself reaching for a hand.

Oftentimes, the feeling passes quickly,
and I am on the run again:
success to achieve,
money to make.
O Lord, you have to catch me on the run
most of the time.
I am too busy to stop,
too important to pause for contemplation.
I hold up too big a section of the sky
to sit down and meditate.
But even on the run,
an occasional flicker of doubt assails me,
And I suspect I may not be as important
to the world
as I think I am.
Jesus said each of us is important to You.
It is as if every hair of our heads were numbered.
How can that be?
But in the hope that it is so,
I would stop running,
stop shouting,
and be myself.

Let me be still now.
Let me be calm.
Let me rest upon the faith that you are, God,
and I need not be afraid. Amen.

----From A Book of Uncommon Prayer by Kenneth
G. Phifer