Be Still and Let Me Look at You

Rabbi Maggie Wenig imagines God as a grandmother who has not seen her children in a long time. When they finally come to visit, they fill the air with nervous chatter — stories, deflections, anything to avoid silence. Until she touches her finger to her lips and says: "Shh. Sha. Be still.”

Then she pushes back her chair. "Let me have a good look at you.”

Wenig writes: "In a single glance, God sees us as both newly born and dying. She sees us when we were young — when we idolized her and trustingly followed her anywhere, when we were filled with wonder at all things new, when we thought there was nothing we could not do. And she sees us in our later years: when we no longer felt so needed, when chaos disrupted the rhythms we had learned to rely upon. She sees us sleeping alone in a room which once slept two.”

"When she is finished looking at us, God might say, 'So tell me, how are you?' Now we are afraid to open our mouths and tell her everything she already knows: whom we love; where we hurt; what we have broken or lost; what we wanted to be when we grew up."

I think about how rarely we allow that kind of stillness. We fill every quiet moment with noise — our phones, our plans, our endless inner monologue. Afraid of what we might hear if we stopped.

But God is asking. Be still. Let me have a good look at you. How are you — really?

The question deserves an honest answer.

Prayer: Loving God, still us. Quiet the noise inside and around us. Let us sit with you long enough to be truly seen — and to answer honestly when you ask how we are. We are here. Have a good look at us. Amen.

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