“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might…”
– Ecclesiastes 9:10
I asked my son, “What brings you peace?”
First he shrugged, then thought a moment, and said with a smirk, “Playing video games!”
At first I rolled my eyes, thinking, “Haven’t you gotten enough of screen time already? And how does that bring you peace? You seem so tense while you are playing! So focused! So single-minded…”
And then I remembered the days when I got the Tetris cartridge for my Nintendo. I could play for hours! And while it was stressful, it also provided a strange sense of peace. I couldn’t think about anything else as I prepared for the next block to appear other than planning for where it might go. All fretting about things I couldn’t control was cast aside. All fleeting distractions were rejected out of hand. All random doubts and fears were gone. It felt like I was firing on all cylinders and there was nothing left for anything other than what I was doing. And that brought its own strange sense of peace.
As I got better at the game, something else happened: it seemed that more space did open in my mind. I could ponder deeper, bigger issues. And I could do so without the usual accompanying bias or emotion.
In doing something “with all my might” I could let go of the things that usually slowed me down, distracted, or caused me to doubt. That was peace. Then I could be open to the movement of something from without – or possibly deep within.
When I went to seminary I learned about a great variety of religious practices. Two things struck me in relationship to Tetris. The first, as you might imagine, was meditation. The second was the Roman Catholic tradition of praying the Rosary. I had thought that this was simply a practice of praying rote prayers. Indeed it is – but that is not all it is! As you work through the courses of prayer, you are supposed to meditate on the mysteries of faith. The prayers themselves do not give you “points with God,” instead they allow you to occupy your busy mind in order to be able to consider higher things. They allow you to ignore all of the noise and hear the voice of God.
I am not saying that you should go purchase a set of rosary beads. But I do commend to you Spiritual disciplines such as prayer and meditation, which will allow you to silence the fuss and commune with God. Indeed, as the author of Ecclesiastes points out, whatever you find to do, do it with all that you are! You might just hear God speak!
Gentle God, we are listening. We listen not only in the silence, but in the busy-ness of our lives. Grant us your peace. Not simply stillness, but focus and confidence. Move in us through disciplines, so that we might be disciples of Jesus in the world today. We pray this in His name. Amen.