Devotions from Margaret Silf’s book, At Sea With God

Do you ever feel like you’re stuck and not going any where, like being adrift on the sea? It could be that we are stopped in our tracks by illness or injury or we’ve lost our vision and sense of direction. Or maybe we feel like we’re going around in circles or we’ve had to change our plans radically. Whatever form of feeling stuck may take, we feel helpless and wonder if God is still there. It may force us into a time of waiting for the breeze that might lift us beyond the stagnation we feel. “Prayer can be the means of taking the salty, sometimes corrosive or destructive experience of our everyday life and distilling it into something fresh and live-giving.”  God can recycle our experience, showing us what is to be fostered and life-giving and what is destructive to us and to be set aside. As this fresh water falls upon us and our circumstance, it brings new growth to our hearts and cleansing and refreshing. Why not start the habit of noticing God’s presence and action in everyday things, the people around us and the ordinary events that happen to us.  Notice the ways in which God has rewoven the brokenness of our experience to help us live a fuller life. It may help to spend time in creation without trying to solve problems, to read an inspiring book, to listen to music that nourishes us in our depths, or visit a spiritual friend. Remember we have the Bedrock that will hold us and is the source of our eternal lives!