I sat on the gray, wooden steps of the porch and pointed my camera up at the brilliant yellow of a bird-planted sunflower.  I sat because I couldn’t trust my balance to keep me steady while standing and holding the camera with both hands.

Just a few days earlier, the world had spun around me like a carousel out of control, and when it stopped, it left me reeling and nauseous.

At the doctor’s office, the nurse noticed my eyes scanning the floor in front of my feet and my hand reaching for the wall to steady myself.

Don’t look down, she cautioned.  Look up.  Look ahead.

The doctor wrote “vertigo” in a space on the yellow form left blank for a diagnosis.

Inner ear . . . possibly a virus . . . medication three times a day . . . keep your head steady

All this would help control the dizziness, to keep the world from spinning.

But the world really is spinning, rotating on its axis at about 1,000 miles per hour (at the equator).

The earth is orbiting the sun at 67,000 miles per hour, and our sun is speeding around the center of our Milk Way galaxy at 490,000 miles per hour.

Even though we are spinning and circling and hurtling through the galaxy, we can’t sense that enormous velocity.  There is no galactic motion sickness. “Dizzying” speeds produce no dizziness.

Despite the unimaginable and yet undetectable speeds, my world can be still.  When the eternal God is the center of my universe, there is peace and calm.

But when I put myself at the center of all things, and my life spins on the axis of my self-centeredness, there is no tranquility.  There is dis-ease–vertigo of the soul.  I was never meant to be the center of the universe.  Only God is.

The nurse’s words echo.

Don’t look down.  Look up.  Look ahead.

I need to turn my gaze away from my own stumbling feet and toward the God who created

the star-studded, spiraled arms of galaxies,

the intersecting spirals at the center of a sunflower,

and tiny, perfect spiral of the cochlea of the inner ear.

Then my world will cease its frantic, dizzying spin.  It will quiet and be still.

Be still before the Lord
    and wait patiently for him;   Psalm 37:7   NIV

 Be still, and know that I am God   Psalm 46:10   NIV

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earth photo from visibleearth.nasa.gov

galaxy photo from Hubblesite.org

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  linking with Diane W. Bailey 

  linking with Sandra Heska King

   linking with Essential Thing Devotions

  linking with Jennifer Dukes Lee

  linking with Holley Gerth