One Sunday morning towards the end of 2023, I had the luxury of going for a walk before attending a Church I was visiting. Just me, God, a family of swans, and the occasional friendly passer-by. I’d only meant to pop out for coffee, but as I began my caffeine quest, I found myself at a canal where God very clearly told me to ‘stop.’

Stopping can be hard. For me, it IS hard. Picture a little bird constantly jerking his head around to take in everything around him, flitting here and there collecting items for his nest, food for supper, and keeping an eye out for predators. Keeping still and focusing on just one thing? It feels unnatural. Even unsafe.

But I’m not a robin. I had time, and I knew I needed to obey.

“Stop. Look. Listen.” That old road-crossing campaign came to mind. God wanted me to stop, and he wanted me to look, and he wanted me to listen. He had things to show me and things to say – things I would miss if I kept rushing past.

So I stopped.

The canal had a strange beauty to it – neither city chic nor rustic rural, yet plenty of the charm of both.

My eyes were drawn to the water. There was almost no breeze, and yet there was clearly a current. It wasn’t obvious, but it was there. Slow, steady, and sure.

I thought about what God had been doing in our church, those refreshing moments in the tangible presence of God, the sense of His Spirit moving.

Why not full-blown revival?

My mind drifted to another river, back to a childhood holiday in France. My brother and I, aged eight and ten, set off down the river Dordogne in a dinghy after being dropped off by my parents, not far (so we thought) from where they would be waiting downriver.

It was meant to take us around 10-15 minutes to paddle with the reasonably swift current to meet them at the riverside beach we had been playing at earlier. We were good swimmers, thrilled to be given this bit of independence. It seemed like a good plan.

But then we rounded a bend… and the current disappeared.

We found ourselves paddling over what seemed to be a very deep, very dark, eerily still, and increasingly scary-looking, never-ending expanse of water. There was not a soul in sight. We began to worry. Not that we wouldn’t make it, but that we were going to take so much longer than my parents expected us to, and that they would begin to panic. Or that somehow we had ended up on the wrong river and missed the beach entirely and might never find them! We paddled harder.

Eventually, we spotted some people on the riverbank and I managed, in my painfully limited French, to ask for directions. They pointed us to the next bend, saying the beach was just beyond a nearby bridge. I wasn’t convinced.

Almost immediately, things started to look up. A stretch of the river (presumably that we should have taken but missed) rejoined us, and the current started flowing again. Around the corner, we saw a giant inflatable whale swimming out to greet us and two very relieved parents on the shore!

Why share that story?

Because the river never actually stopped flowing.

Despite what it felt like. The river was still moving. We were always going to get there. But instead of relaxing and soaking in the beauty of one of the most stunning places on earth, we’d exhausted ourselves trying to force the journey to go faster. Trying to control the pace and dictate the speed.  Fearing that we weren’t going fast or paddling hard enough.

We sometimes do that with God.

We long for revival. We cry out for God’s Kingdom to come – and that’s a good thing to do. But in the hunger and the striving, we can miss or belittle what God is doing right now.

Sometimes God moves in our lives like a fast-flowing flume at a water park, rushing and exhilarating. But sometimes it’s like we’re on a slow stretch of the river, quiet and deep and full of hidden beauty. Both are just as valid, and God has purpose in both.

What God was telling me on that crisp Sunday morning, was that it’s not either / or, there’s room for both, and whilst we are crying out for revival, to be caught up in the river rapids to out-do all river rapids, there are things that he is doing now, in stiller water, that he wants us to see and enjoy.

Revival will come. God’s Kingdom will come. Don’t stop seeking it. But don’t be afraid to stop. Look around. Listen. Trust him that the current hasn’t stopped just because it feels slower. God is moving. He is working. And he has things to show you now – if only you’ll pause long enough to see them.