Stay

Acts 1:12–14

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• they returned to Jerusalem
• they went up to the upper room
• all these with one accord
• devoting themselves to prayer

Applying the Word to My Life:
I am back from my monthly meeting with my Benedictine oblate group in Nebraska. As oblates, we are a group of people trying to live the Benedictine charisms of prayer, obedience, and stability as best we can in our everyday lives. The monks work with us to give us the formation and support we need to do that. Maybe that's why this morning, I see all three of these charisms at work in our reading — but most especially stability.

Prayer and obedience most people kind of understand. But stability is probably the least intuitive of the three and the most counterintuitive in a culture that is always on the move, always searching for something. The basic idea is this: stay. Root yourself in one place, one community, one set of practices, and resist the restless pull toward something newer or better or more spiritually promising. The monks figured out a long time ago that the search for God — the sense that He must be out there somewhere, on a distant mountain or at the next retreat — can actually work against you. You can spend so much energy moving toward God that you never slow down enough for Him to meet you where you are.

After the Ascension, the disciples return to Jerusalem — obedience, following what Jesus told them to do. They go up to the upper room. And they devote themselves to prayer together with Mary — the first novena, nine days of sustained waiting before the Spirit comes at Pentecost.

There is enough going on, it is easy to ignore the place where it all happens. But Luke cares enough to make it clear — they are in the upper room where they have been staying. This is not a new room. They have been here before. More than once.

This is the room where Jesus sat with them at the Last Supper and gave them everything He could before the Passion — bread, wine, teaching, washing their feet. This is the room they locked themselves into after the arrest, scared and not sure what came next. This is the room where the risen Jesus appeared to them, where He showed Thomas His hands and His side, where He breathed on them and said receive the Holy Spirit. This is the room where He told them to wait, that the Spirit was coming, that they would be His witnesses to the ends of the earth.

And now, after the Ascension, this is the room they go back to. They don't scatter to their hometowns. They don't go searching for a new place more suited to whatever comes next. They go back upstairs.

The room hasn't changed. But every time they come back to it, they are different people. Formation happened here because they kept coming back. The meaning of the room deepened not because of something the room did, but because of what they were becoming each time they walked back through the door.

That is stability. Not staying because there is nowhere better to go. Staying because the work of becoming who God made you to be happens in the staying, not in the searching.

There is something in all of us that wants to find God somewhere more dramatic — a pilgrimage, a mountain top, a retreat far from the ordinary. And sometimes those things are good. But the disciples at their most formative moment went upstairs to a room they already knew, sat down with the people they already had, and prayed. The Spirit didn't come to them because they found the right place. He came because they stayed in the right posture.

All these with one accord, devoting themselves to prayer. Obedience brought them back to Jerusalem. Stability kept them in the room. Prayer is what they did while they waited. Our intuition says that our restless pursuit will achieve our goals, the Apostles are showing us that there is a better path.

Instead of chasing God, maybe the better move is slowing down so He can catch you.

My Response for Today:
Today I will resist the urge to go looking for God somewhere else — and instead return to the room where He has already met me.