Article December 11, 2017 Issue

To ‘lie down in green pastures’

Mark Swinney

I just love how discovering fresh ideas about spirituality and prayer can be so enlightening and encouraging—even healing. For instance, one approach that’s been very helpful to me is to go in prayer to one good, inspiring idea, and remain consciously there with it. Praying this way, I’ve found, can be significantly more productive than quickly bouncing from idea to idea, sort of like a flat stone skipping along a lake’s smooth surface. And one inspiring idea can lead to many useful insights.

In light of that, I appreciate where the Bible’s book of Psalms says, “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures” (23:2). I like to think of those as green pastures of fresh, healing insights. God, divine Love, doesn’t lead us there only to leave us after we’ve felt inspired for a short moment or two. No, we have the inherent ability to figuratively lie down (rest) in those pastures—to hold to what we’ve glimpsed of Love’s care for its creation, to pause and be grateful for the fresh, deep goodness of divine Truth. Christ Jesus talks about this kind of singleness of thought in his Sermon on the Mount: “If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (Matthew 6:22).

On any typical day, there may be a need to switch our attention between a good number of tasks and thoughts. We often must multitask our way through the day, moving very quickly between our responsibilities until they’re completed. But it’s possible to remain conscious of God’s goodness—to remain lying down, or mentally at rest, in that green pasture of inspiration—all the while continuing to operate effectively within the context of everyday life, completing everything necessary.

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