Wake Up to Wonder: 22 Invitations to Amazement in the Everyday a 5-Day Reading Plan by Karen Wright MarshExemplo

Day Four: Go Deep—Take A Pause

Scripture: Psalm 46:1-3, 7, Matthew 11:28-29, Philippians 4:6-7

Howard Thurman (1899–1981) left home while still a boy because, for Black children, Daytona, Florida schools ended in seventh grade. Years later, after achieving grand successes in high school, college, seminary, and graduate school, having a highly public career, and with honorary doctorates and twenty-two books to his name, Howard would point back to his grandmother as his greatest influence. Nancy Ambrose, born into slavery, had every reason to fear; yet, she was emboldened by the person of Jesus as secretly preached by an enslaved minister who proclaimed these exhilarating words: “You are not slaves condemned forever to do your master’s will—you are God’s children.” This truth, carried throughout her life provided Thurman with a permanent grounding in God: the experience of himself as a human being.

Howard discovered an unconventional answer as to what is needed for renewal and fresh courage: stillness. A spacious spirituality. To people struggling for justice, to whom it seems a luxury to wait in quietness when the world around is so sick, weary, desperate, Howard says, “We cannot get through to the great anxieties that surround us until, somehow, a path is found through the little anxieties that beset us.” To people “afraid of quiet,” beset by a fetish of fevered action, he calls for rest, “lest we perish.”

Practical pastor Howard Thurman insists that sometime during each and every day, everything should stop and we must practice “the art of being still.” Even if it means that this time is snatched from the greedy demands of work, we must engage in doing nothing at all: no reading of book or paper, no thinking of the next action, no fretting over past mistakes, no talk. Little by little, Howard assures us, we will release our habitual fear of rest, of pause.

Howard Thurman had long ago perfected the art of being still as a solitary boy in his rowboat, fishing along the river, hearing no sound but the lapping of the waves against the boat. Later he would recall that moment when beyond the single pulse beat there was a Presence who would always speak to him. In that intimate encounter, there was no voice. There was no image. There was no vision. There was God. And there was rest.

Take five minutes to speak to God about all that you carry. What has you feeling displaced or uprooted? What private needs can you name? What might you hear God saying in response? Now, sit in the stillness of His Presence and listen.