Devotion - Thursday, November 17

It is getting to be that time of the year - the time when we see the stress levels go up and the self care going down. I feel it too. I realize that when you are the busiest, I tend to get busy, too. I think it is something in the air that affects us all. We fail, during this time of the year, to allow ourselves to find our rest in God.

I not only write a morning thought, I read a couple. This one spoke to me, and I thought it worth sharing with you. It is, as you will be able to tell, part of a short series - on mysticism - and it addresses allowing ourselves to find that rest, in God.


The final experience of mysticism, after the optimistic explosion that we usually call hope, and the ensuing sense of safety, is of deep rest. It’s the verb I’m told that is most used by the mystics: “resting in God.” All this striving and this need to perform, climb, and achieve becomes, on some very real level, unnecessary. It’s already here, now. I can stop all this overproduction and over-proving of myself. That’s Western and American culture. It’s not the Gospel at all.

We’ve all imbibed the culture of unrest so deeply. We just cannot believe that we could be respected or admired or received or loved without some level of performance. We are all performers and overachievers, and we think “when we do that” we will finally be lovable. Once you ride on the performance principle, you don’t even allow yourself to achieve it. Even when you “achieve” a good day of “performing,” it will never be enough, because it is inherently self-advancing and therefore self-defeating. You might call it “spiritual capitalism.”