I don’t know about you, but I find that in my day-to-day life, I struggle to make space to just sit & linger. For instance, if I’m going on a hike on a beautiful day, I often find myself not thinking about the nature at all but rather the work I need to do after that hike, or if I’m eating dinner I’m not actually focusing on enjoying the food, but rather paying attention to the video or show I’m watching at the same time.
We, in today’s culture, are so captivated by constantly keeping ourselves entertained & updated on the next thing that we hardly ever take time to simply linger in a moment. The question is, however, if we do this so constantly in our day-to-day lives, how often do we simply move on from a moment that God wants us to linger in?
Recently at one of our weekly Thursday night prayer meetings, God confronted this mentality in me. While we were praying, He revealed to me a picture of Him tending plants as they grew into trees, but He highlighted that despite the season (whether dry, wet, sunny, or snowy), the trees remained planted where they were in His presence, and He remained to tend to them. The trees didn’t need to get up & walk to another place to be filled up & grow. They knew to dig their roots deep & linger in His presence, and that He was enough for them.
The psalmist in Psalm 1 writes about this in a very similar picture, declaring that He who delights in the law of the Lord is “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither” (Psalm 1:2-3 ESV). By intentionally choosing to meditate & linger on the Lord & His word, we are filled like a fruitful tree.
In a world so consumed by the fast paced life, God is calling us to slow down & spend time with Him. To choose to set aside time to welcome His presence, & to continue to linger with Him after welcoming Him. He wants to reside with us, be present in the routine of our lives, & continuously pour His love into us as we learn to remain in His presence, rather than just doing it for two minutes each day & then moving on.
So let us learn to not simply move on, but rather learn to linger. To rein in our minds & hearts to spend just a few more minutes with Him & Him alone. When we remain, our roots dig deeper & our branches stretch higher, we develop intimacy with Him, and He tends to us as the Good Gardener He is.