Back when I couldn't sit still in churchI have never heard God’s voice, but he spoke to me so clearly the other day that I can describe his voice. It is the voice of love and compassion. It is the voice of peace in the middle of a storm. It is the voice I will follow for the rest of my life.
It was the morning of September 4. The theme verse for that day’s Bible readings surprised me: “Be still, my daughter.” I couldn’t imagine where those words were found in the Bible, so I looked up the reference: Ruth 3:18. Surely I had read this before, but it had never spoken to me as it did after I compared this version (New King James) with the rendering in the New International, the Bible translation I usually read. It declared, “Wait, my daughter . . . .”
Immediately I was struck by the difference in feeling between the two versions. The word “waiting” prompted me to visualize the start of a horse race. Mounted horses wait in chutes for the buzzer to sound, the gates to bang open, the bolting forward as the race begins. Although waiting, there is no stillness in this scene. Muscles are taut with expectation and there is impatient movement, even though controlled by the small confines of the chute and the jockey atop the horse. Amidst some pawing of the ground or tension-filled snorting, horses and riders are completely alert as they focus not on waiting, but on the moment they will be set free to run with the wind. There is absolutely no resting in this kind of waiting.
“Sit still, my daughter” has an entirely different feel. I pictured sitting with my mother in church so many years ago as a child. If I jiggled my legs or swung them back and forth under the pew (when they didn’t yet touch the ground), she eventually would put her hand on my leg and say quietly, “Sit still, Cheryl.” What she meant was, “Stop jiggling and be quiet. This is time for church now. Later it will be time for other things. But for now, just be still; be in this moment.”
I also remembered her hand on my tiny, feverish forehead. “Lie still, Cheryl, and rest,” she would soothe. It didn’t matter what I should have been doing, wished I were doing, or wanted to be doing as soon as possible. The immediate call was for stillness in the moment. And through this, healing would come on its own schedule.
After meditating on the passage, I wrote in my journal that morning: “Stillness goes with quietness (both of body and spirit). It implies peacefulness, rest, and renewal—all these things I am seeking in this month of intentional rest, Lord God. And so I hear you this morning, ‘Sit still, my daughter.’ I will obey. I will remain quietly in this moment, not anticipating anything to come—just reveling in your loving presence. Thank you for speaking so directly to my heart this morning, Lord Jesus.”
I had no way of knowing that later that very day my respiratory doctor would say to me, “I suspect your renal cell carcinoma has returned.”
At first, sitting on a blue-gray Naugahyde chair, awaiting the results of a CT scan ordered to confirm or deny the doctor’s suspicions, I felt numb—not good, not bad, not anything. But slowly the impact of his words began invading the protective shell that held me, and suddenly my mind was the lead car in a NASCAR race. No longer was I in that hospital waiting area. I was now three-plus months ahead and wondering whether I’d see Christmas in December or the birth of my granddaughter in January.
As my thoughts teetered on panic, I heard the gentle, soothing voice of God, “Sit still, my daughter.” Suddenly the tension and fear disappeared as I focused not on the future, but on that very moment and on the fact that God was present with me in it. Circumstances had changed, even dramatically. But the One who said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you,” was also the One who “is the same yesterday and today and forever.” And in that moment, I heard his voice and I was comforted.
“Sit still, my daughter,” he reminded me. And with gratitude overflowing, I answered, “Yes, Father, I will obey.”
