When We Stop

"One morning as I was hurriedly dressing to begin a full and thrilling day I felt pain in my back. I mentioned it to my wife but was sure it would soon pass away. However, she insisted I see a physician, and he put me in a hospital.

In the hospital I was very unhappy. I had no time to be wasting there in bed. My calendar was full of good activities and the doctor had told me to cancel all my appointments for at least a month. A dear minister friend of mine came to see me. He sat down and very firmly said, "Charles, I have only one thing to say to you--'He *maketh* me to lie down.'

I lay there thinking about those words in the Twenty-third Psalm long after my friend had gone. I thought about how the shepherd starts the sheep grazing about 4 o'clock in the morning. The sheep walk steadily as they graze; they are never still.

By 10 o'clock, the sun is beaming down and the sheep are hot, tired, and thirsty. The wise shepherd knows that the sheep must not drink when it is hot, neither when its stomach is filled with undigested grass.

So the shepherd makes the sheep lie down in green pastures, in a cool, soft spot. The sheep will not eat lying down, so he chews his cud, which is nature's way of digestion.

Study the lives of great people, and you will find every one of them drew apart from the hurry of life for rest and reflection. Great poems are not written in the midst of clamoring multitudes; our visions of God come when we stop..."

Author: Charles L. Allen
Source: "God's Psychiatry"