Tag: be still and know

Advent 2: Candle of Peace 2025

by Steve Harsh, posted in Advent, Christmas, self-care, spiritual discipline

“Be still and know that I am God.” Those words from Psalm 46 were given to the people of Jerusalem when their city was literally surrounded by the armies of Assyria. In a time when their lives were in pieces God offers the gift of inner peace. “Relax, breathe,” God says, “Trust me to handle this.”

This second Sunday in Advent is a time to find quiet stillness in our souls because we are in God’s hands. God is the source of inner calm which we must have for peaceful living with our neighbors. We cannot solve the problems of world peace. But each of us is called to be a peacemaker with that neighbor, who votes the wrong way, and with the weird cousin who disrupts family gatherings, and with the co-worker who drives us batty.

Today we relight the candle of hope from last Sunday, and we faithfully light the candle of peace that begins in each of our hearts.

[Light two candles]

Please join me in the prayer on the screen:

Dear God, you are our refuge and strength. Because of you we do not fear when our lives go to pieces. We know the peace that begins when we take time to be still and know you are always with us. You give us a peace that passes all human understanding. You promise us a Prince of Peace, and this Advent season we prepare ourselves again for his coming. Because of his birth in a humble stable we find a stable faith that shows up in peacemaking wherever we are. Amen

Northwest UMC, Columbus, Ohio

Silence Over Words

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith Development

“The Godhead deserves our attention, and we approach and honor it through silence more than through words.”  This quote from Meister Eckhart was in my devotions this morning from Christian Mystics, by Matthew Fox.  It is devotion #134 of 365, and it really hit home today.  I posted a piece in my blog yesterday afternoon on “Respectful Disagreement” and a short time later got a notice from WordPress, my blog platform that I have never seen before.  It simply said that my blog stats were taking off.  I looked up the stats and was amazed that there had been 48 views of that piece in just an hour.  And the hits just kept coming all day!  There were 130 views by days end and another 29 this morning, far more in 24 hours than anything I’ve written in 11 years of blogging. 

I’m quite sure that it is not my writing but the urgency of the topic that is attracting the attention.  There are obviously a lot of people feeling the need for respectful disagreement, and God knows we should be.  But all that aside I could not help from feeling pretty proud of myself.  And along comes God speaking thru Meister Eckhart and Matthew Fox to put me in my place yet again. 

Here’s the full quote from Eckhart –

“God is a being beyond being and a nothingness beyond being. The most beautiful thing which a person can say about God would be for that person to remain silent from the wisdom of an inner wealth. So, be silent and quit flapping your gums about God.” 

That smarts for a preacher and writer who has spent the last 53 years talking about God.  It reminds me of hearing somewhere that trying to talk about God is like biting a wall.  Words as inadequate as they are remain the primary tool we use to try and communicate the uncommunicable mysteries of existence.

Of course here I am still trying to capture the uncapturable with my puny words instead of just shutting up and living in mystery.  Silence and surrender are just so uncomfortable that I cannot tolerate them for long.  I know I will write about this again soon, but OK, God, for now I will be still and know what I cannot “know.”