A Holy Pause

Sometimes God has us on a mission and it is like a great cavalry charge out of the movies. (My personal favorite is in the movie The Return of the King, in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, where the riders of Rohan make a great charge against the enemy following a rousing speech by King Theoden.) There is tumult, the thunder of hooves, and the shock of the clash with the enemy. It's invigorating!

But there are other times when God calls us away from that thing were doing-- from That Thing We're Doing For Him(!)-- to a Holy Pause. In Matthew 14, Jesus learns of the murderous execution of John the Baptist, and withdraws by boat to a quiet place to pray. But the crowds follow him on foot from all the nearby towns, and verse 14 (NIV) tells us,

When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, and healed their sick.

As evening approached, the disciples approached him and said, "This is a remote place, and it's already getting late. Send the crowds way, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food."

Jesus replied, "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat."

"Bring them here to me," he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Wow! What a ministry! What a triumph! What great miracle is Jesus going to do next??? But the Bible tells us something unexpected, as the passage continues:

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone...

Sometimes God calls us to A Holy Pause. This is a place of praying and waiting, in between doing something, and then doing something different. In my own personal life, God has been talking to me for most of the past year about a "New Direction," "New Pathways," and "New Doorways." One of those new doorways was the book, 101 God Thoughts, which was written this past year and is now available on Amazon. "Okay, that's great, God. Check box completed, but now what?"

Last night, he gave me a dream which suggests my physical work that I have been doing here in South Carolina is coming to a stopping point. While I was pondering the dream this morning and asking God about it in my journal, I opened my phone to Facebook. (Yes, I am easily distracted during my Quiet Time. Shame on me.) But I saw an interesting picture. It had been shared by Chris Logan in the Facebook group "Give Me A Sign." (I don't know if he is the photographer, or simply shared it.) It shows a cluster of road signs that appear to be totally contradictory. North is both to the left AND to the right. Your brain sees it and says, "Wait! What???" And then (if you're experienced), you pause and ponder the situation rather than impulsively making a wrong turn.

I was praying about the dream and about the above "sign from God" and a scene from another The Lord of the Rings movie came to mind. In the movie The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf and company are wandering through the mines of Moria. They come to a crossroads, and Gandalf is puzzled. "I have no memory of this place," he says, and then sits down to think. This is the Holy Pause, where one road is ending and you don't know where to go from here, so you WAIT. (Waiting sucks. I hate it I hate it I hate it.) Eventually, a direction comes to him. Gandalf smiles and says "It's THIS way. The air is less foul there." (Or something to that effect.) And so they depart in a new direction.

I feel that in my own life, I am approaching this stopping point, this Holy Pause, and I am in need of direction. Some of you are there too-- I feel you! Please pray for me to clearly understand the Lord's new direction. I will do the same for you, so reach out.

May each of us have grace for the waiting, and ears for the hearing.

Give me a sign!