Stuck between channels.....

"Stuck between channels, my thoughts all quit, I thought about them too much......" Now this sort of inertia makes sense to me - but hopefully not too often - the words are from "Sleep through the static" by Jack Johnson.

There is a terrible place of quietness which we sometimes encounter - not the place of fuzziness where we know another channel is just around the corner (remember the old TVs where you turned the knob with one hand and moved the antenna with the other?) - no not that - something even deeper that in between the channels. The place where our thoughts really do seem to quit because we have run out of thinking.

But if we have run out of thinking - and we may well have done for some of the things we cannot cure - then we have not run out of being and God has not run out of loving. Our reaction is often to run from that place of dread or shut down completely instead of inviting God into it.

Unfortunately this is something we have to teach ourselves to do in advance of being there because often when we get to the point of having our thoughts quit on us we cannot muster enough sensibility or strength to think to invite God to that place - so whilst we are in a better place we have to make that a reflex reaction - we have to give ourselves tools and reactions which we can use when we hit the hard walls. We have to say to ourselves - this is my bottom line - when there is nothing else to say or pray I will say or pray this.

Stuck between channels....God where are you? Stuck between channels......God please help. Stuck between channels.....I am still breathing.......breathe in......come Lord Jesus.

So what are the words, the mantras, the objects, the pictures for in between channels when our thoughts quit and we need God to hold on.