Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

Be still and know

Thursday, March 7, 2002

Jeremiah 7:23
Listen to my voice; then I will be your God and you will be my people.

I remember moments of silence. Living in Madison, Wisconsin during the early 70's I installed a plywood ceiling four feet from the floor of a small coat closet and covered the space with carpet padding. That was my first prayer closet.

When we worked together with Christian Campus Fellowship, Don Follis took me for a day of retreat to a small monastery in Olivet, south of Danville. We spent several hours in silence. The conversation we had afterward was meaningful and sweet.

Walking alone, up and down beanfields when I was a kid. Lying under a wagon half full of corn watching the clouds move slowly through the sky. Silence. Early in the morning, listening to the birds sing. Late at night, reaching up with my imagination to the stars.

I listen to my own thoughts. If I listen long enough, the voices inside me quiet down. When they do, I relax from the inside out. Calm waves lap the sand and my mind becomes more still, at peace, available.

How will I ever hear the voice of God if I don't seek silence, if I don't turn off the buzzing electric sounds that mimic life, that tie me to the world, that shut out heaven?

Eric Reed, editor of Leadership Journal, turned off TV for Lent. Here is something of what he writes about that experience:

St. John of the Cross uses the phrase my house being now all stilled. He refers to the stillness of his spiritual house in which the soul lives without words. In my case, the stillness must come first in a literal sense. My den is stilled before my soul is stilled. In this stilling, we go to sleep a little earlier, we read more carefully, we talk more deeply - when we choose to talk.
And we listen.
The evenings are at first very long, but in the growing quiet of the passing weeks, twilight seems as a single moment with a single thought, if any thought. By Holy Week, we are ready for Christ to break our silence however he chooses:

"One of you will betray me."
"Father, forgive them."
"It is finished."
If we make room with our silence, the Word will resound.

Lord, you invite me to come to you when I am weak and heavy laden. When I finally come, and when I finally listen, you will speak and give me rest.

Devotions Archive

Be still and know

Thursday, March 7, 2002