We are constantly surrounded by a myriad of sounds. They surround us. Music, ads, and jingles play in every public sphere of our lives, from waiting rooms to elevators, from walking down the street to waiting on the phone. Then, of course, there is the sounds that we cultivate ourselves. We return home and instantly turn on the television. Early morning commutes occur in the presence of the radio, or the music blasting from our headphones. More and more, with every passing year, decade, and generations, sound becomes unavoidable, so unavoidable that the biblical call of 'for you, O God, my soul in silence waits'
We simply do not know how to remain silent.
We have grown accustomed to the noises of the background, noises that contain no importance, claim no focus, yet exists for the sole purpose of taking up acoustic space. We find comfort in background noise. Yet these noises do nothing but continually call our attention and focus away from our internal connection to God. There is always something else that we are called to focus on. Thus our attention and focus constantly shifts and continually moves. Here there can be no restedness, no peace, no rootedenss.
The early church had a saying 'Cultivate silence and it will teach you everything.' A single-hearted focus on God and His kingdom can only occur as we enter into the process of quieting ourselves before His presence. As long as the direction of our soul's activity and focus is upon the frantic otherness of the life around us we will never be able to catch even the smallest glimpse of the presence of God in our life.
Our reluctance to remain steadfast in prayer; our inability to discern God's own voice apart from the voices of the world, our feeling of skimming over the deep things of faith are all rooted in our inability to remain silent. Yet silence is that to which we are continually called. The prophet Isaiah beckons us with the words 'In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. (Isaiah 30:15). In fact, the entire earth is called to 'keep silence' before The Lord in his holy temple (Habakuk 2:20). We cut ourselves off from a tremendous source of spiritual livelihood when we fail to adequately cultivate silence as a regular discipline of the life of faith.
Silence involves the closing off of ourselves to that which whirls around us. Noise, music, words of any kind are laid aside so that we can enter into the place of deep listening. We still the inner chatter. We open ourselves to God's presence and attempt, as best we can, to remain attentive to His words. Silence is a passive place. It is not defined by our activity or our striving. In silence we wait. We listen. We abide. We long for God to speak, to act, to move, and only then do we respond to the rhythms of God.
Dietrich Bonehoffer writes: "Silence is the simple stillness of the individual under the Word of God. We are silent before hearing the Word because our thoughts are already directed to the Word, as a child is quiet when he enters his Father's room. We are silent after hearing the Word because the word is still speaking and dwelling within us. . . . .Real silence, real stillness, really holding one's tongue comes only as the sober consequence of spiritual stillness. (Life together, page 79).
Cultivating silence can be as simple as finding 5 minutes during the day to sit it quietness and turn our attention to our Lord. Find a quiet place where you can remain undisturbed. To the best of your ability, remove all distractions of sight and sound from the atmosphere. Simply sit, with no agenda, with no notions of what will occur. Simply sit in an attitude of openness. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to judge, slow to define. Simply ask God to be fill the quiet space, and expect that in God's own way, God will do so. After the 5 minutes are completed, then rise and continue on in the day, yet attempt to keep the inner quietness, cultivated in the space of external quietness, with you. Over time, this will become increasingly easier and a source of constant nourishment and power for your Christian journey.
Monday 22 June 2015
Monday 8 June 2015
Week #13: Drive the Speed Limit
I used to receive speeding tickets fairly regularly. I used to view the ‘Estimated Time of Arrival’ display on my GPS as a challenge to overcome. I used to relish at my ability do a 7 hour road-trip in a little less than 5hours. Each time that ETA time decreased I felt a jolt of victory. I say 'used to' because the attempting to live within the Discipline of Simplicity has caused me to slow down.
You may have never thought that the speed at which you drive may be a spiritual issue. I certainly never did. Yet desiring to live a life of single-hearted focus upon God lead me to wonder if my speeding was merely a product of having a ‘lead foot’, or whether there could be an underlying spiritual issue at play. Does our speeding speak to the manner in which we spiritually approach life around us? Could the act racing through the streets of our cities actually be a symptom of the manner in which we try to race through the activities and duties of my day? Could the desire to get to our destination as quickly as possible actually create an inability to acknowledge the presence of God in the beauty of the moment?
See, we live in a face paced world and it is easy to get caught up with the quickness of it. It is easy to see every time-frame as a challenge to be met. While we race to one event or task, our minds are already dwelling on that which we need to do afterwards. We never focus, we never rest, we never sit still. The rush rush of life forever rips our attention onto the next thing.
This is not the way that God wishes us to live in his presence. The call of God on our lives is not one in which we are called to rush toward a perceived goal. We are called acknowledge that God is alive and present in this moment. God does not call us to rush to him, as some destination held out for us in the future, but to realize and enter into his presence and activity as it is presently. In his book, "A Testament of Devotion", Thomas Kelly writes "I find He never guides us into an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness. The Cosmic Presence becomes, in part, our patience, for after all, God is at work in the world." God is active in us and through us, and his blessings are bountiful. We risk missing all of this when we speed through our lives.
The act of slowing down allows us to remove ourselves from the expectations and deadlines to which we constantly racing towards. That internal clock - the one continually telling us to be quicker, more productive, more efficient or generally 'better' - is silenced as we engage in the intricacy of the present moment. Slowing down allowed us to recognize the great spiritual truth, that God rarely calls us to ‘go faster’. Instead He calls us to ‘be still’; to ‘consider the lilies of the field’, and to ‘wait for the Lord.’
So the next time you are in your car, try slowing down and Drive the Speed limit. Try not to justify rushing ahead through the rhetoric of 'keeping up with the flow' or '70 really means 80'. No. Keep to the limit, and try not to concern yourself with how people around you may be responding. In this exercise, they are not your concern. Slow down not just your speed, but also your perceptions and attitudes as it relates to how you interact with the tapestry of life around you. Attempt to be conscious of the moment, and of God's presence in the intricacy of it. As you make your way through the streets, attempt to be still and wait for the Lord. Who knows, you just might find your car to be a place of powerful communion with God.
You may have never thought that the speed at which you drive may be a spiritual issue. I certainly never did. Yet desiring to live a life of single-hearted focus upon God lead me to wonder if my speeding was merely a product of having a ‘lead foot’, or whether there could be an underlying spiritual issue at play. Does our speeding speak to the manner in which we spiritually approach life around us? Could the act racing through the streets of our cities actually be a symptom of the manner in which we try to race through the activities and duties of my day? Could the desire to get to our destination as quickly as possible actually create an inability to acknowledge the presence of God in the beauty of the moment?
See, we live in a face paced world and it is easy to get caught up with the quickness of it. It is easy to see every time-frame as a challenge to be met. While we race to one event or task, our minds are already dwelling on that which we need to do afterwards. We never focus, we never rest, we never sit still. The rush rush of life forever rips our attention onto the next thing.
This is not the way that God wishes us to live in his presence. The call of God on our lives is not one in which we are called to rush toward a perceived goal. We are called acknowledge that God is alive and present in this moment. God does not call us to rush to him, as some destination held out for us in the future, but to realize and enter into his presence and activity as it is presently. In his book, "A Testament of Devotion", Thomas Kelly writes "I find He never guides us into an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness. The Cosmic Presence becomes, in part, our patience, for after all, God is at work in the world." God is active in us and through us, and his blessings are bountiful. We risk missing all of this when we speed through our lives.
The act of slowing down allows us to remove ourselves from the expectations and deadlines to which we constantly racing towards. That internal clock - the one continually telling us to be quicker, more productive, more efficient or generally 'better' - is silenced as we engage in the intricacy of the present moment. Slowing down allowed us to recognize the great spiritual truth, that God rarely calls us to ‘go faster’. Instead He calls us to ‘be still’; to ‘consider the lilies of the field’, and to ‘wait for the Lord.’
So the next time you are in your car, try slowing down and Drive the Speed limit. Try not to justify rushing ahead through the rhetoric of 'keeping up with the flow' or '70 really means 80'. No. Keep to the limit, and try not to concern yourself with how people around you may be responding. In this exercise, they are not your concern. Slow down not just your speed, but also your perceptions and attitudes as it relates to how you interact with the tapestry of life around you. Attempt to be conscious of the moment, and of God's presence in the intricacy of it. As you make your way through the streets, attempt to be still and wait for the Lord. Who knows, you just might find your car to be a place of powerful communion with God.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)