I Get a Bit Judgy

(Quickly about my absence...I started a job where I work more hours and hardly knew if blogging would ever fit again. Now I'm finding a glimmer of a routine, so I think it might. Here's a little something to get us going again.)

One pitfall I fall into regularly is judging. I'm not talking about the people-judging problem, though that could offer a part two to this judgy post. I'm talking about judging my every move. Jesus asked me not to. Wise people say the mind gets quiet when you aren’t constantly categorizing everything as right or wrong. 

Which must be nice. It’s a freakin’ whirlwind up in here. Lies swirl when you go at a crazy pace. In the middle of the madness of a busy day, I lose track of reality - the reality that says God is big, I am small, but I matter because I work for God. To do lists get loud. Phones ring. Texts buzz. I remember something I forgot to do yesterday and now I’m late. I get confused by everything coming at me and I start throwing guesses at stuff. “Yes! That’s the right thing to work on now,” though I’m not really sure. I guess at what I can leave for later. I guess at how important a lunch break is. I guess that it’ll be better to push through than to take a break. Right, wrong, wrong, wrong, right. It’s frantic and it’s because I don’t know. I don’t know which end is up.

But we don't have to be stuck in the lost, confused, STRESS whirlwind. That time I took an hour to pray, things got really quiet. I got to see what “being still” can do for us. Everything that had toppled down in the mayhem, Jesus set back up.

God at the top, me under his wings.

God in charge, me trusting.

God ruling everything, judging everything, so I don’t have to.

Once we're quiet we can ask, “What’s the next right thing?” and we’ll hear the whisper. I believe we can learn to maintain an inner quiet so we hear this all through the madness. I think that’s how Jesus followed his Father non-stop. Not asking himself what he thought was right or wrong or good or bad. Not guessing. Because if we learn to be quiet, we can hear the quiet voice of the Spirit. Jesus sent him to live inside us so we don’t have to guess. We can know.