'Being' vs. 'Doing'

“The one thing I ask of the Lord - the thing I seek most - is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, delighting in the Lord’s perfections and meditating in his Temple.” (Psalms 27:4)

​On the 23rd March this year, the most significant set of restrictions on British life in living memory were set in place as the prime minister ordered people to stay in their homes.

As the UK went in to lockdown, people began to ask themselves ‘what will we do?’Joe Wicks invited us to join him and stay fit. Zoom opened up endless possibilities for ‘business as usual’ (well, maybe not quite ‘usual’) on so many fronts including work, social events and even church. People were buying in to bake, while others explored ‘do at home’ hobbies; for the studious type, on-line courses were being thrown at us free of charge (yes, I did one because I can’t resist a freebie!).

Alongside this, though, something else also was happening. Some people heard a ‘still small voice’, that encouraged them to ‘be’ as well as ‘do’. They felt that a door opened into a deeper place of ‘being’ in God. They have taken time to draw aside, they have been ‘delighting in the Lord’s perfections and meditating in his Temple’; it has been a time of blessing indeed. Lockdown has become a time of more intimate fellowship with God, ‘being’ in His presence. 

​I am reminded of the words of an old hymn:

Alone upon the mount of God I stand,
With silenced heart His voice to hear;
‘Tis love itself hath led this hungry soul
Unto the place of vision clear.


How wonderful amid this hush divine,
Entranced, God’s beauty to behold;
To wait whilst deep with deep doth meet and merge,
And love its secrets doth unfold.


Within the shadow of almighty love,
This soul at last hath found its home,
Embosomed in the faithfulness of Him
From whom it never-more shall roam.

Spurgeon said, ‘Nearness to God brings likeness to God. The more you see God, the more God will be seen in you’.


So, if  we have learned more deeply how to ‘be’ in His presence during these past months, let’s make every effort to make this our new ‘normal’ so that we will maintain all that we have gained and, in turn, be able to lead another ‘hungry soul, unto the place of vision clear’.

Pauline Anderson