Step 1: Quit job to become professional author.
Step 2: Be still.
Step 3: Profit.
Today
is the first weekday since quitting my job. Thursday ended my employment with
Amazon.com, where I worked as an overpaid, pampered software engineer. No more
expensive catered lunches for me, no sir! Here I sit in the quiet of my room
with the ocean breeze blowing softly through my window to aid me on a hot day. The
windows don’t open in my old office building, and despite the
perfect control of the air conditioning, I prefer the ocean
breeze.
My life
has been in chaos for the three years of my employment at earth’s largest
store. Rarely total chaos, more of a controlled chaos. It’s not as though I
worked particularly long hours, but when you work in a job that isn’t what God made
you for, you become easily exhausted. When you find what He has made you for, then
work doesn’t seem like work.
“Be still
and know that I am God.” A famous command from the 46th Psalm that precedes
“I will be exalted among the nations. My name will be exalted in all the earth.”
I believe this means that in order for His name to be exalted in all the
nations, in the works of our hands, in our lives, in our families, or to our
neighbors, we must first be still. “Tarry in Jerusalem and wait for the gift my
Father promised” would be another example is of this. He who cannot tarry is
not fit for work in the Kingdom.
Today,
I’m trying to be still. I’m taking a trip to Thailand and Japan in two weeks,
so the time hasn’t come to publish my next novel. The time has come to be
still. During the last month of my previous employment, the stress of
transition (mixed with spiritual attack) caused me to wake up for an hour or
two every night. If you’re curious, this is why I haven’t posted much in the
last month. The day I quit, the insomnia stopped, but I still need full
recovery from that month.
And
yet, it’s hard. Harder than I thought it would be. I’m noticing all the little
things I never had much time for, things like oil changes and optometrist’s
appointments. The velocity of the last few years of my life has left me moving,
moving, moving. If I have time, I usually needed to use it to do some errand like
shopping. This truck barreling down the hill still hasn’t quite come to rest. Even
at the grocery store, I felt strange to be a working-age man shopping at 2 PM
on a weekday. Why is “be still” so hard?
I mean,
think about it. God says to us: “Relax! Enjoy a good book. Have some fun. Get
some sleep. Stop worrying.” And for some reason, we get all uptight, turn Him
down on the offer, and decide that we’d rather exhaust ourselves and be
miserable. Why in the world is it so hard to rest?
It’s
hard because of the rewards of hard work. God loves hard work, for starters. He
made us to work. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Because as much as He
designed us for hard work, He designed us for hard rest. I’m talking about how
our society functions. When you work, your coworkers give you a pat on the back
and say, “Good job! You finished on time.” You get pay, prestige, and power. When
you Sabbath, God gives you invisible rewards. So, it makes sense that in a
culture so accustomed to only caring about the visible world, we can’t hold
still.
“Be
still and know that I am God.” A man who does not know how to be still has no
place doing God’s work. In three years of computer programming, have I lost my
ability be still? Have I gained l33t computer skillz at the cost of resting
skills? Because if so, I must take His yoke upon myself so that I can again
become fit for work in the Kingdom.
