Brazil: Be Still

Be Still.

I was lying on the sand of a Brazilian beach--no towel or blanket to guard my skin of the grounds of sand. 

Brilliantly still, absorbing in the truth of the moment beyond my senses.

Lying there with my eyes closed :: Listening to the sweeping of the waves and the hushing whisper of the breeze over my ears as I felt my hair begin to dance over my face much like that of Pocahontas when John Smith encounters her in the waterfall.

There is no feeling like it. 

I lied there thinking. Thinking about how no technology or advanced simulation could ever emulate the truth of what I had in that moment. No wind-machine or sound box, no sand box or hot stones in a massage therapist's room. Not if the temperature was matched and everything down to the smell was emulated in another setting outside that of the ocean shore, the most essential element would be missing.

Knowledge.

I would know that I was not at the beach. As thriving of an imagination that I believe I have, I would not be able to convince myself to that deepest core that I was indeed on the beach.

Then it hit me. All of a sudden, it made sense. I had heard it time and time again and recognized the poetic thrill and mystic appeal that is most common with Scripture, but never had I related with it in such an elating manner.

Be still and know that I am God.

(see Psalm 46:10)

Some call it an epiphany, some a revelation. I'm not quite sure what to call it. All I know is that God was present in that moment and made known to me the Truth of his word in a marvelous way, as He has so many times before.

In the same way that God cannot be emulated--as He so often times is attempted to be recreated in experience and idolatry--one cannot fully conceive the Truth of His existence without the experience of His presence :: more than that of being with God, but being engulfed in God, swallowed up and participating in the God that is outside space and time.

It's not that we allow God to be in our presence by being still, or let the dust of the Holy Spirit settle on our hearts, it's that we are settled into His masterpiece of a presence. 

It's an experience that can only be appreciated to the full when we are submitted to being

 --still--

And when you do make that act of submission into His active presence is when you will know. You know because you experience it, and no one can convince you differently of something you have experienced.