Be Still, Even With a Calendar Like Yours
Bobbie Schaeperkoetter
4 min read ⭑
Recently I was sitting with my son on the couch, and he glanced over my shoulder while I was adding a meeting to my phone’s calendar.
“Wow! Mom, your calendar is so full. That’s crazy!” he said. Simultaneously, two warring feelings surfaced. While I am not proud to admit this, the first feeling was pride. If my schedule is busy, that must mean I’m needed and important. People depend on me. I matter, right?
Like many of us, I sometimes mistakenly equate my busyness with my value. If I’m not mindful of the temptation, I can feel my own self-worth increase as the number of tasks on my calendar rises. Who we are can easily get tied up in what we can do and what we can produce. That’s a common lie in our modern culture.
The second feeling that came up for me was dread. Just looking at everything that I had already committed my time and attention to overwhelmed me. I started to wonder how on earth I could possibly get everything done or where I could carve out time for myself and my relationships. Then anxious thoughts rose to the surface of my soul as I considered what would have to be sacrificed for this busy schedule to be lived out.
Eugene Golovesov; Unsplash
Like me, maybe you’ve had days when you prayed God would do a miracle and make the clock stand still so that you could do all that you’ve planned to do. We live in a culture that is incredibly fast-paced. Not only that, but there is also this impossible superhuman expectation to have it all, do it all and be it all. We’re caught in a current of busyness that constantly pulls us in and pulls us under.
Theologian and philosopher Dallas Willard is credited with saying, “Busyness is the enemy of spirituality” and “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.” I feel the reality of each of these phrases deep in my bones. Do you?
We’ve got busy schedules. Our lives are full. Our task list feels unending. There is always pressure to do, go, be, have and accomplish more. We feel the effect in our bodies, our minds and also deep in our souls. We’re living in a way that has us distracted, detached and disillusioned.
Busyness and hurry are two of the biggest roadblocks to the deeper, richer, more connected life with God that we all long for. I’ve talked to parents, students, pastors, teachers, people in the business world and others from countless walks of life, and they all have one thing in common: They admit that carving out time to engage with God is extremely challenging because of how full their lives are.
A Better Way
How do we overcome the soul-damaging and relationship-killing pattern of busyness in our lives? God gives us one simple and powerful command that acts like an antidote for our hurry sickness: “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps. 46:10, NIV).
If you just rolled your eyes and huffed out a sigh because we just spent the last few minutes establishing the fact that our schedules are too crazy to be still, I totally get it. I huffed out a sigh even as I wrote it. It sounds both incredibly simple and insanely impossible just to be still and know that God is God. But when I feel like I can’t pause from the busyness of my own life to engage with God, I am in a place that is dangerous for my soul. I am saying that I’m in charge of keeping everything going, not God. I am declaring that without me, everything will fall apart.
Being still goes against everything in us that wants to strive for success and control. Stillness is countercultural, and it goes against our own human nature. My feelings of pride and dread echo the lie that my life is all about me and that the responsibility for it falls entirely on me.
“When we still ourselves and fix our eyes on the one who really holds it all together and keeps the world spinning, we receive a perspective that offers us peace for the frantic pace of our lives.”
This invitation isn’t meant to be demeaning; rather, it serves as a message offering relief from burdens we aren’t meant to carry. The weight of this world and the responsibility to keep it all spinning isn’t on our shoulders; we can’t carry that kind of weight, and we weren’t meant to. Acknowledging God as sovereign gives us permission to be human, to be finite and to rest in his power and presence.
Being still and letting God be God reorients everything for us. Being still dethrones us and puts God on the throne of our life and of our day. It gives us a truer perspective and lays the foundation we need for every other step of this practice.
The author of Psalm 63 writes this:
O God, you are my God;
I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you;
my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land
where there is no water.
I have seen you in your sanctuary
and gazed upon your power and glory.
Your unfailing love is better than life itself;
how I praise you!
I will praise you as long as I live,
lifting up my hands to you in prayer (Ps. 63:1-4 NLT).
Like the psalmist, we must take our eyes off ourselves and recognize that God is God. We have to willingly acknowledge who God is and what he’s done in us, in our lives and in the world around us. We choose to be intentional by pausing from the busyness around us and calling our hearts into a posture of worship. We rightly proclaim that God alone is on the throne of our lives. He is worthy of all honor, all glory and all praise. From this position, the pressure we feel fades to the background, and God’s presence and power move to the foreground.
When we still ourselves and fix our eyes on the one who really holds it all together and keeps the world spinning, we receive a perspective that offers us peace for the frantic pace of our lives.
Bobbie Schaeperkoetter is a spiritual director and pastor of spiritual formation and discipleship at Capital City Christian Church in Jefferson City, Missouri. She is also the president of INSPIRE, a nonprofit multidenominational women's ministry dedicated to uniting Christian women in heart and purpose.
Taken from “With God Every Day” by Bobbie Schaeperkoetter. Copyright © 2026. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press.
