The Power of Quiet

We live in a world where quiet and stillness are a priceless commodity.  We are constantly bombarded by noise and dissonance, distraction and diversion.  Finding time to be quiet or to enjoy the quiet is all the more important today than it has ever been.  Quiet.  Stillness.  The sense of liberation from urgency and freedom from the rush of this life to a place of quiet is essential.

Psalm 37:7, 46:10, and 62:1 speak of the importance of silence, of the quiet.  Quiet is not so much an environment as it is a state of mind.  It is easy to turn off the television and the phone, it is much more difficult to turn off our minds.  Quieting our thoughts is more than challenging, for some, it is nearly an impossible endeavor.

The focus should not be on completely silencing our thoughts to nothingness.  Simplification is the focus of the quiet.  Instead of grabbing hold of every thought that enters our minds, we should reduce the thoughts to one, simple, irreducible thought: the Lord is God.

This seems simple enough but it is the irreducible, perfect assertion that is the key to achieving biblical quietness.  Thinking is like building.  One thought adds on to another and to another, until an idea is formed.  These ideas then build upon each other in interrelation and the richness of the mind.  This is the noise and dissonance that biblical quietness seeks to overcome.  The goal of quietness is to tear down the building of thought in order that it may be remade on the firmest of foundations: God.

Quiet then is not based on the cacophony that is the external world.  Instead, biblical quietness is the noise of thoughts and ideas that fill our minds and cloud our ability to sense that irreducible, irreplaceable, and self-evident truth: that God is God.  Apart from this assertion, all life is useless and worthless.  It is this basic building block idea that goes on to inform and guide every thought that makes up our lives and our world views.  

The cornerstone, laid as the surest of foundations, is Christ (Psa. 118:22; Isa. 28:16; Eph. 2:19-20).  When we seek out the quiet, we are intentionally seeking to (re)assert that Christ is the cornerstone, not just of the church but of our lives.  Quiet does not happen passively.  Our fleshly selves is unable to achieve the quiet.  In reality, our fleshly selves is wholly opposed to the quiet because it is spiritually attained.  Therefore, seeking quiet is invaluable in the life of the believer.  Because it is in the quiet that we are reminded of that which is most important, God.