Be Still

We are about 3 weeks into the quarantine.  For 3 weeks I've been asking God what it is he wants me to learn from this, take away from this.  On March 23rd a verse came to mind.

The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still.

Exodus 14:14

I've been studying Exodus since last September.  Studying the context of this verse made me love it even more.  In Exodus 14 God had finally delivered the Israelites out of Egypt and they were traveling in the desert.  The Egyptian army was pursuing them and had them cornered against the Red Sea, no where to go. They became afraid and angry at Moses and at God.  "It would have been better to live in Egypt (in slavery) than to die in the desert."  But Moses says to his people "Do not be afraid, stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today.  The Egyptians you see today you will never see again.  The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."  And then God delivers the Israelites again from the Egyptian army, he parts the Red Sea!  Theologians estimate that 2.5 million Israelites crossed the Red Sea on dry ground.  Then the Egyptians come after them, they are thrown into confusion, the waters go back into place, killing the army and the Israelites are safe on the other side.

This verse have been given to me a number of times in my life, through grief, hard diagnoses and times of darkness in my marriage. In the last few weeks it has had another layer added to it.  So many of us are needing to stay home, we are kind of being forced to be still.  My problem is I don't do still very well especially in times of high anxiety and unknown.  I shuffle around my house going from this task to that.  I can't even just sit and watch tv, I need to be folding laundry, exercising or knitting.  I've had more nervous energy so it seems like I can't accomplish much, I just shuffle around and finish my little jobs half way.  But a couple weeks ago I felt God was saying, stop, read, rest, play games with the kids, learn a new song on the piano, WRITE.  That was the biggest one, write.  I started journaling and just listening to the little things God wants to tell me. I threw the schedule for how I wanted the kids day to go in the garbage.  We get our work done but it is done a bit more "organically" now.  And today I decided I might blog for the first time in 3 years.  Why not.

This is a hard time for all of us for a lot of different reasons.  I decided that I want to spend this time as "well" as I can.  I need to remember that we still have the same God that parted the Red Sea fighting for us now.  So I am choosing to be still as I wait for him to deliver us in whatever way he sees fit.