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December 23
Ah, What Then?
Psalms 46
"Be still, and know that I am God ..." (v. 10)
In the quiet time the soul is stilled so that it concentrates on God, and it is through this concentration that the spiritual life is deepened. The great French Christian Blaise Pascal once declared that "nearly all the ills of life spring from this simple source, that we are unable to sit still for long in a quiet room." In this modern age people seem to find it difficult to sit quietly for long. They must have a radio blaring or something else to drown the silence. Sitting still can be therapeutic, but what if in the stillness we meet with God? We then receive spiritual therapy. God waits to offer us infinite resources -- for the asking and the taking. The quiet time is where the soul grows receptive, where prayer becomes, as a poet put it, "the organ of spiritual touch," where the touch becomes, as effective and as healing as the touch of the woman on the hem of Jesus' garment, where peace flows into our turbulence, where love absorbs our resentments, where joy heals our griefs, and where we enter into the process of being known. The quiet time shuts us in with God, the door closes upon us, and then infinite resources flood into our soul. The door opens and we move out, with an increased awareness of God, ready to face a world that knows so little about Him. There is, as we have said, great benefit in stillness, but when we meet with God in the stillness -- ah, what then?
Prayer: My Father and my God, I see that I need to think more seriously about the whole nature of my quiet times. In avoiding legalism, help me not to go in the other direction either -- the direction of casualness. In Your Son's precious Name I pray. Amen.
For Further Study
1. What did the psalmist do?
2. What was the result?
