Nurturing Stillness in our Inner Garden

“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”

            -Mark 1:35

“But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”

            -Luke 5:16

Physical gardens offer us unique doorway into the secret garden of our souls—that inner sanctuary where our true relationship with God blossoms. Physical gardens offer external stillness, which in turn helps us to enter a still place within. Like any garden, however, our inner garden must be nurtured.

One way we nurture the inner garden is by cultivating stillness. Stillness seldom happens on its own. In our hyperactive world, we must give ourselves permission to pull apart from what we consider to me a more productive use of our time. We disconnect from technology of any kind. We settle our racing thoughts.

To do so, we must truly value our time alone with God and be intentional about setting such time apart in the midst of our hectic days.

Without sufficient stillness, our spiritual growth will always remain superficial. If Jesus needed regular solitude and stillness for prayer in his life and ministry, how much more do we? Only by cultivating the deep soil of stillness can our roots reach down.

2017 © Glenn E. Myers

This series is Creation Proclaiming God’s Divine Nature, as Romans 1:20 declares, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”