Life consists in triads which makes sense being that humans were made in the image of a Trinitarian God, three in one and one in three. We are knit together body, mind, and soul.  We experience time in past, present, and future. We experience life through thinking, being, and doing.

In the lattermost triad, I tend to try to live like a two-legged stool. I am comfortable in the land of thinking as my resting state. In my excited state, I become a dogged doer,  checking things off of my list and getting things done. I wrestle deeply with being. I  usually only get to a place of being by exhausting myself from thinking too much and/or hitting a wall from running myself ragged.

Last week, when I collapsed into my Sabbath time at a shaded picnic table near my home, the Lord gave me a little hummingbird who landed right above my head.

Hummingbirds press the limits of metabolism. They are the smallest of all birds, yet they flap their wings at dizzying speeds between 12 to 80 beats per second. They have been clocked in wind tunnels at flying nearly 35 miles per hour, which may sound slow for a  car, but it fast for something that can weigh less than a nickel.

I have an affinity for hummingbirds. In addition to the fact that they are fascinating to watch and breathtaking to see, my soul is drawn to them because I tend to fly too quickly, forgetting to stop and be.

Be Still

Even hasty hummingbirds
Who fly at inhuman speed
Must rest their wild wings.
A sacred stillness they need. 

You flit, fleet, and fly about,
From petal to petal you buzz. 
You press metabolism’s limit,
Forgetting what busyness does. 

Come now, my self-serious one,
Slow your pulse to my pace.
In my firm grip, cease a second,
Come now,  look at my face. 

I am He who made the Hibiscus.
I am the winder of these wings.
I am your Creator and Keeper,
I am He who controls all things.

Be still, little one. I will feed you full. 

I pray that this poem helps those who share my affinity and likeness (only in busyness) to the hummingbird find a perch in the presence of the Triune God to rest and be still.