Image Attribution Ian Tresman Wikimedia Creative Commons Licence 3.00
Many years ago, at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, one ‘ride’ was strictly for the physically fit. It was a flat wooden disc about 20 feet in diameter and set at an angle of 45 degrees in the floor. When it began to rotate, the aim was to get to the pole at the centre. As the disc rotated faster, anyone who failed to get to the pole got flung off. It is now banned as far too dangerous!
The principle of the ride was a basic law of physics: when any wheel rotates, the outer rim moves fastest of all. Half way to the centre and you are moving a lot more slowly. In theory, at the absolute centre, is a point which is totally still. So anyone who reached the centre pole could stand there quite safely.
This ride can remind us that in our own rapidly spinning world, God is the still centre.
All around God is motion, sound, change, growth and decay – galaxies circling, seasons and years rotating, life developing and decaying. And at the still centre, where there is no variableness, is God, the same yesterday, today and forever.
One great characteristic of Jesus was His stillness. Busy, harassed, injured people found someone with neither clever chat nor idle gossip, neither vulgar boasting nor loud opinion. His life always seemed to rotate round a still central point, which gave Him balance and authority.
“Be still and know that I am God” wrote the Psalmist.
A Julian Meeting can be a time for us to try and do just that – to find the still centre of God in our own individual lives.
Of course, we’re all very much in the world, and its busyness. But it may do none of us any harm to be a little more silent than we often are: to be quick to listen and slow to speak.
And the more silent spaces we give ourselves, the more we’ll give that still, small voice within each one of us the chance to be heard.
Gary Bowness