This week’s emphasis is meditation. Today’s blog is originally from the book, Pause: The Secret to a Better Life, One Word at a Time.
“Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind. The two ideas are quite different.” -Richard J. Foster
Do you ever feel like you always catch the red lights when driving through town? I recently realized life can feel that way.
Something, or Someone, is causing us to caution, to pause, to slow, to stop.
Think about our life experiences of pausing as a journey to a local traffic light. Think about it this way. Driving along Life Street, I’m usually in a hurry. I’m not totally sure the number of times “usually” reveals, but I’m probably in a hurry more often than usually.
So I’ve asked my Creator to slow me down. Disappointing to my personality and my preferred preferences, He heard that prayer. And He is working to answer it.
The Listener finds various ways to turn on caution lights or stop lights in my journey of life. I desire green. I seek to go. Moving forward toward another intersection of life, a next turn, the final destination. A goal to accomplish. A purpose to fulfill. A plan to finalize. But when I rush through life, driving rapidly to that next duty, task, appointment, the Caution Light on Life Street comes on.
Slow down, it says. 
Don’t be in such a hurry, it says.
Be still, it says.
Caution, it says.
Some of us want to rush on through that calm yellow before noticing the controlling red. In life, not on the streets, we speed up our pace when a pause is pending. We hurry through in our purpose-driven addiction.
Yesterday, I guided a group of students about hitting pause in life. About stopping for silence, for reverence, for meditation, for listening, for waiting, for staying. Instead of today’s image of the Caution Light, in our class we’ve used the image of the Table. We think about Someone preparing a Table for us. Around enemies, around ourselves, amid our rush, among our friends, a Table is being prepared. Will we take time to sit? To eat? To listen? Will we stop long enough to notice? Will we learn the wonder of a pause, a caution, a stop, a breath?
I’m trying.
As I hurry to my next life street, I’m trying.
(Try to fit in five minutes of silence today. Be still. Listen. Breathe. Meditate. Think about your life goals. Pray for the wisdom to accomplish them.)
