Doctrine and Covenants 5:34

"Yea, for this cause I have said: Stop, and stand still until I command thee, and I will provide means whereby thou mayest accomplish the thing which I have commanded thee."
Doctrine and Covenants 5:34



This is a verse given to Joseph Smith about translating.  He asked God what he should do, and this was part of the answer.  To me, this is fascinating because so often in our lives we ask God which direction we should go or which choice we should make, and we leave out options like this.  Sometimes the answer is to stop.  Sometimes we should wait and do nothing.  Those are hard answers for us to hear sometimes, because we are so focused on doing, accomplishing, and deciding that we forget to stop, listen, and consider.  We're in such a hurry that we'd rather fast-forward part of our lives, or just skip them entirely.  We want to get to work without living through the commute.  We're in such a hurry to get to the weekend that we'd usually love it if we could just skip a couple of the days of the week.  We want to grow up so fast that we'd often rather just skip childhood.  Except, life isn't just a highlights reel.  Some of our most important lessons are in between things that we consider important or worthwhile.  Random conversations at the airport or the store, people we run into accidentally walking across campus, people we run into on the way somewhere.  God puts things into our paths that matter so much, if we will take the time to stop and notice.  Today, no matter what we're rushing towards and how much we are looking forward to that... let's stop, and stand still for a little while.  When we pray today, let's try to listen more for those options that we may not be considering, and as we go through our day, let's watch for the in between moments, and watch for things along the way.