IN today’s world, more than at any other time, we demand instant responses. Instant answers to questions, emails, answer phone messages, texts, the list goes on. Anything we buy has to be with us now or the next day, or we complain bitterly – I want it now! This pressure puts people under immense strain.

News of earthquakes, war and refugees come to us as it is happening through a variety of media gadgets. Sometimes I just want to say: "Stop the world I want to get off." I want to stop spinning round and get some kind of peace in my life and slow down – it’s probably just my age!

In a book I read some time ago by Michael Mayne, entitled Learning to Dance, he says: "To be human is to be shaped by God with a space at our centre. The mystics of all traditions speak of what Thomas Merton calls, ‘a point of nothingness at the centre of our being that belongs entirely to God'.”

To find God is to seek solitude and look within ourselves to that point of stillness, nothingness, a place where time seems to stand still and we stop spinning round aimlessly. It is a place where we can just be alone with God and seek direction in our lives.

Michael Mayne adds: “If we seek God in the world about us we shall find him nowhere, but if we first find him within we shall begin to find him everywhere.”

To find God is to find peace and stillness in a spinning world, and this enables us to find him everywhere and show compassion for humanity and love and respect for all people no matter what their creed or culture.

We pray for the refugees seeking asylum in Europe.

The Rev Jenny Savage

Vicar of St Stephen's, Steeton