Subtle Differences

There is a subtle difference between responding to the will of God while content to wait within that will and thrashing out on one’s own as the pioneer of re-creation. In the case of the first, I am a small yet integral part of the complete circumference of an all-powerful, perfect God. I move within movement, and sometimes I rest. Sometimes inaction is my action. Sometimes admitting “I just don’t know” is what I know.


In the latter case, the teetering universe seems to be hanging on the thread of my thought processes, or worse yet, my feelings. There is drama and melancholy and frustration because there are so many walls to climb over, so many barriers because I am the only one whose movement, whose architecture I am ever aware of. I am a selfish instigator loaded with zeal and fueled by hunger. In this scenario, God can only go where I choose to go. When I accidentally land myself in the whale’s belly, I spend my days trying to light the candle in my pocket so that I can repeat the same world I just magically escaped from. Then I experience the most humbling of revelations to date….not even the whale wants me.

Remember, God is infinitely bigger than my most profound insight into Him. He is bigger than my most insurmountable problem. He is bigger than my wildest dreams. He is bigger than my Christian lifestyle. God is bigger than my life. I can do my best in the “situation room” of holiness, encountering one triviality at a time, one emergency at a time, limiting the Creator of the Universe to only those questions I know that I have the answer to, or I can begin to move through stillness into His magnificent solutions for every issue, every conflict, every one of us. I can participate with gratitude that “little, insignificant Me” gets to be a part of God’s wonderous plans. Those plans are perfect and they will always work out for the best.

It’s a subtle difference like the difference between deep, rhythmic breathing and momentary gasping.  

Be still and know that I am God.–Psalm 46:10

-submitted by Kerri Snell