“So he said, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.” 

Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. 

So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 

(1 Kings 19:10-13)

I have always loved this story. Elijah was a prophet to the Lord who was unpopular and persecuted, and now at the end of hope. He calls out to the Lord in desperation: I alone am left. And then the Lord answers him, but not in the great wind, or the earthquake, or the fire, but in a “still small voice.”  So many things in this passage feel relatable: feeling that our beliefs are everywhere rejected and attacked, feeling alone, feeling despair, looking for or expecting the Lord to answer our prayers in obvious and loud ways. And then how gently the Lord does speak to us. 

But we can only hear the Lord after the other chaos dies down. The Lord isn’t in the loud and all consuming events that demand our attention. The Lord is in the quiet and the stillness. Of course we can only really hear the Lord in our own lives when we leave a still space for Him to speak in to. 

And similarly, we can only really hear others’–our neighbor, friend, and family– when we allow a space for them to speak. When we actually listen. 

Some short thoughts that came to me on vacation this week. While enjoying floating in the middle of a lake, surrounded all around by soft water, I was struck by how water so gently holds you, but also completely supports you. 

As we know, water can also be forceful and frightening—dangerous. Like all elements it has many forms. And maybe that makes its gentleness all the more striking. 

Likewise, the Lord’s awesome power only makes His gentleness more touching. The fact that He could toss me like mere driftwood through the tides and obstacles of life makes His compassionate and patient leading that much more poignant. 

And just as when I relax back into the embrace of the lake—with the joy of sun above me and blue and green world all around— when I rest in His care, I am completely held. 

“The LORD is my strength and my shield; My heart trusts in Him, and I am helped; Therefore my heart greatly rejoices, And with my song I praise Him.” Psalm 28:7

Until I thought of myself as the sea

I used to separate good days from bad until 
I thought of myself as an ocean. I used to 
split times I felt strong from when I felt weak 
until I imagined myself as the sea. Calm and 
rocky, wild and soft, still and powerful and vast 
and more than any one thing. In the ocean it’s 
hard to divorce one mood from another, one wave 
from the next. Now, on my worst days, I think 
of how good life is too, how I still can greet joy 
while swimming through grief. How fragile 
strength feels. How I’m not any one thing in any 
one moment on any one day. I’m all of it and 
all of it is me. 

– Hannah Napier Rosenberg

I came across this poem on Instagram and it resonated deeply. It feels like something that women in particular relate to, and need to hear. It led me to my frequent meditations on enough-ness and the struggle to be all of our feelings and experiences at once, not diminishing or canceling either side. 

Watching my two and a half year old clean up can be a painful experience. Pick up two board books, try to untangle a third from a blanket, drop one, pick it up, free the blanket one and bend to pick it up, drop the other two, pick these two up, step forward to get the third, stumble over the blanket, drop one, bend, pick up ALL three, take two steps, drop one. On and on. As an infinitely more capable adult (or big sibling) watching this process can be torture. The desire to step in and make it smooth, efficient, painless can be almost impossible to resist. But the most shocking part of the whole process is that, ultimately, it works. The books end up on the shelf, and my little girl is slightly puffed up with pleasure at a job well done. 

Why does it work? Certainly not through efficiency, speed or accuracy. It works through continual, small (sometimes futile) efforts. 

“Little and often.” I first heard this quote from my mom, which she heard from another artist about making time for creative efforts, but I’ve been thinking about how it applies to any effort—particularly spiritual effort. 

Turn to the Lord: think of Him, take a deep breath, trust Him for this moment, utter a tiny prayer. Just do it, it doesn’t have to be big and certainly not perfect. But do it often.

For years I have been trying to make gratitude a bigger part of my life. For the last year and a half that has taken the form of writing a daily gratitude for my husband. It is sometimes very brief, sometimes left undone for a few days so I have to play catch up. It sometimes feels manufactured and pointless, and I have to force myself to do it. Yet because I do it, taken all together my book of gratitudes is not so little. 

Little and often. Does this resonate with you? It certainly helps me to remember (for the eightieth time) that growth doesn’t have to (isn’t supposed to) be fast or big, it just needs to be worked at consistently. What are the little and often spiritual practices that work for you? 

I like the thought of embracing my inner two year old who is at once so maddeningly inefficient, and so impressively persistent. And if she can get the job done, maybe I can too. It’s of course not the sweeping change I want, but it is powerful. Because after all, the Lord Himself told us that this is how He will change us: “Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased, and you inherit the land.” (Exodus 23:30)