About 8 years ago (wow!) I wrote a poem about the incredible smallness of Jesus and how small things hold impressions of Him within them. Like the tiny veins in a flower petal, pollen grains, mustard seeds, and the faintness of a breath.

Lately, I’ve been feeling these nudges, these pulls, these small tugs on my spirit to come deeper into silence and stillness. To turn the T.V. off. To turn down the noise of the world around me. To, as John Eldredge has said, go against the pace of the world. Because Jesus can be found, I even dare say, wants to be found in the small, silent things of the world.

Why?

This year, my Maker has encouraged me to read through the Bible again. But I’ll be taking my time. I’ll be intentional. I won’t just read to make sure I can check off the YouVersion bullet points or avoid that ever taunting “off track” reminder. I’ll read, as Dallas Willard has said, so the scripture is “transferred into the substance of [my life].”

I don’t know if I’ll finish the whole Bible in a year, or if it will take longer, but I am inspired to make my way through it. As I am learning to listen for God’s voice using Mark Virkler’s teachings, one of his encouragements is to have a deep, working understanding of the word.

I am convinced that this is in alignment with God’s Will for His Beloved . I believe He wants us to go deeper and slower so that we may dig our “roots down into him” and let our “lives be built on him.” Building is slow, deep work. Requires the small things to be attached, bonded together, to be intact.

The tiny thoughts, the tiny dreams, the tiny worries and wantings. He wants all of them. He mines for them like precious jewels because they are precious to Him. He wants our small unseen things in order to transform them. He majors in the minors because the big things that are seen with the eye “are not made of things which do appear.”

Is it a wonder why the only work He wanted from His followers was to believe? What stuff makes up belief but the invisible iotas of our thoughts and desires? What stuff makes up belief but the wailing whispers of our wills?

He is wanting to gather them all like fireflies in a jar. Not to enslave us, but to make us into light.

By His grace I will press into the small stillness. I hope you do too.