Continuing from Too Busy to Receive Anything New:
And this is where the Church of Jesus Christ deserves a little (or a lot) more credit. In our attention to the many needful things to do as members of Christ’s Church, sometimes the many excuses the Saints have to stop doing are overlooked. Compared to a typical modern schedule, think of all the opportunities we have to stop: the Sabbath, personal prayer and scripture study, family meals, family prayer and scripture study, family prayer and scriptures, date night, family home evening, sacrament, the temple and more.
Wow! Every one of these is a prime “stopping time” — especially if we approach it in that way. Rather than a divinely prompted pause in our stream of doing-many-other-things, however, these sacred practices often still remain just-one-more-thing-to-do.
What would happen to us emotionally and spiritually if we approached these spiritual practices (each of them) as intentional of respite and sanctuary?
Instead of “all these things to do,” imagine approaching each of these sacred practices “on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally, as if our lives depend on them.”9 In this way we can come to experience:
- What it feels like to kneel before God not simply to say more words—but also to rest in His presence in stillness and silence.
- What it’s like to sit down as a family not simply to “get a chapter done”—but instead, to hold scriptural text as an anchor to focus minds and hearts and facilitate an opening exploration about God’s hand in our lives.
- What it’s like to go to the temple not to “do a session”— but instead to stop doing —and enjoy being in the haven of God’s home, pondering His creative work in the world and in our lives.
None of these possibilities, of course, are foreign. References to a spacious, heart-full approach to gospel living are laced throughout scriptural and general conference teaching. But that doesn’t make it easy to practice! As President Gordon B. Hinkley said:
“We live in a very mad world when all is said and done. The pressures are tremendous. We fly at high speeds. We drive at high speeds. We program ourselves . . . But there is hardly time to reflect, and think, and pause, and meditate. I dare say that most of those in this room today have not taken an hour in the last year to sit down quietly, each [one individually] . . . reflecting upon his place in the world, upon his destiny, upon his capacity to do good, upon his mission to make some changes for good. We need to. I recall so vividly President McKay in his old age in a meeting with his counselors and the Twelve saying, “Brethren, we do not spend enough time meditating.” ~Jacob Z Hess, Carrie L. Skarda, Kyle D. Anderson, Ty R. Mansfield, The Power of Stillness (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2019) p.18-19
