Everyone knows, of course, the familiar line from Shakespeare’s great play, Hamlet: “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” But few of us really believe it.
To us the question is, “To do, or not to do.” The most casual glance at our lifestyles will clearly and certainly reveal that. Many of us spend our lives in spasms of activity. We speed through frantic work and frenzied leisure, as if the theme song to our lives is a ‘50s doo-wop song: We “go, go, go” and “do, do, do.” And day after day, month after month, year after year, that becomes our life: doing, not being.
But isn’t it interesting that, when Moses confronted God in the burning bush and asked the Almighty for His name, God answered: “I am that I am” (Exodus 3:14, KJV). Not “I do what I do,” but “I am that I am.” With His answer to Moses, God was saying something important, something quite radical.
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God revealed Himself to Moses as pure existence: “I am that I am.” That was a revolutionary theological concept to Moses’ world—as it clearly is to ours. God is not only the source of existence; He is existence. He is.
I can’t imagine that God could have made Himself any clearer. And yet I, who want to be like Him, still “go, go, go,” and “do, do, do.” But I can feel Him calling, and drawing me. And not just me, but perhaps others around me as well.
I believe He is saying to me and to us: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10, NIV). Be still. Be.
That’s not easy, I know. Some of us don’t even know how to “be.” (Some are even now puzzled by the proposition, even as you read this blog post). Certainly few of us have ever even tried it. But if we truly want to be like our Father in heaven, we will try. We will learn.
I may have learned it first—certainly best—from the Trappist monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani, south of Bardstown, Kentucky. Seventeen or so years ago, I began sojourning there for an annual prayer retreat.
I was intrigued to see the lives of several dozen monks ordered not by frantic efforts to “do” and to “accomplish” things—though they do accomplish much—but by the priority of “being,” putting themselves in God’s path. They waited on him in patient prayer, devotion, silence and solitude. Being, not doing.
It’s not an easy discipline to learn, but it’s well worth it—to spend time in God’s presence, not “accomplishing” stuff, not chattering or checking off items on a list, but being with Him. Sitting. Staying. Being still. Being quiet. Being.
If we can learn to do that, we will become more than we ever were before.
