This summer, my Sunday School class is studying “God in the Yard” by L. L. Barkat. Tomorrow we’ll discuss Chapter 3, Contemplation. (I’ll have to catch you up on Chapters 1 and 2 sometime. I’ve read them, and done some of the activities, though I wasn’t in class either of those weeks for the discussion.)

I don’t fancy myself an outdoorsy sort of person, so the idea of traipsing into my yard every day for a year, like the author, seems a bit foreign to me. Shoot! Spending an hour in the yard every day for a week would be a stretch. It is summer, after all, and this week temperatures crawled into the low hundreds.

We do, however, have a nice, newly screened in porch with a ceiling fan on the back of our house. Surely it would be the perfect summer substitute, and no bugs!

So off I traipsed, through the french doors off the kitchen and stepped onto my porch, turned to the right and flipped the switch for the ceiling fan without missing a beat. I journeyed the necessary 8 or more feet to the cushioned sofa, looking to the left and noticed my next-door neighbor in his side yard near Peter’s vegetable garden.

Not wanting to be spotted, nor disturbed, I quickly took my place, prostrate on the sofa. Readjusting the pillows, I made myself cozy for the pursuit of contemplation. I suppose like Barkat, my approach was a bit ambiguous. And I hoped it wasn’t an insult to look for Jesus in the trees.

As I lay there, I reflected on yesterday’s quiet time. My mind had raced and I couldn’t seem to settle it – not through prayer, nor on the Scriptures. So I played “Be Still” by Kari Jobe on my iPod and sat on the floor, perfectly still. For about half a second. Then I laid on the floor, for slightly longer. Maybe a third of a minute. Leg stretches. The music somehow psyched me into thinking I was doing pilates.

Be still. Why was that so difficult? How could I know “He is God,” if I couldn’t even make myself be still?

Finally.
Forcibly.
Still.

I thought about God in the stillness as I lie on the sofa, listening to the sound of birds. And crickets. And the breeze in the trees. I imagined the breeze was the very breath of God.

And I examined the clouds. They were moving much less slowly than I suspected, given the strength of the breeze. In fact, the clouds appeared to be completely still. How could that be? The sky was full of clouds, gray and white. The wind was blowing but the clouds weren’t moving. Weird.

That’s when I noticed it.

When I steadied my view on the big picture, the clouds didn’t move at all. But when I looked at the smaller clouds, the ones closest to me, they were actually clipping along.

Life is like that sometimes. If we focus only on the vastness of our circumstances, we may miss God moving in the smaller details of our lives. The situations closest to us.

I must have dozed off while pondering this because the sound of a bird passing by awakened me with a start.

While I was sleeping, the big gray clouds had drifted away. All that remained were the white wispy clouds that dotted the blue sky.

I whispered a prayer thanking the One whose breath fills my soul, and pushes back the storm clouds.

Week 3 prayer (from the book)
“God of the Universe, Maker of heaven and earth, how can I find you? Let me be open to your voice wherever it speaks, to your hand wherever it touches, to your fragrance wherever it drifts on the wind.”

What about you?
How do you spend time in contemplation? Is it challenging for you to “be still” and know that He is God? Do you see the large storm clouds of life, or the smaller ones being pushed by Holy Breath?