DAILY DEVOTIONAL
June 19 — Silence as discipline
A spoken reading of this is being recorded — it will appear here soon.
June 19 — Silence as Discipline
"For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not." — Isaiah 30:15 (KJV)
The verse continues: but you were unwilling. That is the part we usually skip. God offers strength through quietness, and we say no — not by speaking, but by filling every empty minute with sound.
Most of us have not chosen this. The phone in the pocket arrived already filled with noise. The default of the modern day is the open inbox, the playing podcast, the autoplaying video, the chime, the count, the badge. Quiet has become something a person has to seek with effort.
The Christian tradition has always known the value of silence. The desert fathers went out to it. Christ withdrew to lonely places to pray. Mary kept things in her heart and pondered them. Elijah found the Lord not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire but in the low whisper. Quiet is where the Lord most often meets us. Not because He cannot speak over the noise, but because we cannot hear over it.
A small experiment for today: five minutes in the morning with no input. No music. No phone. No reading. Just sit. Pray if a prayer comes; if not, let the silence be the prayer. The first time will feel uncomfortable. The seventh time will feel like the only sane part of the day.
"My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him." — Psalm 62:5 (KJV)
May the Lord bless you and keep you.