Resting in the Quiet

Come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker. For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Psalm 95:6-7

This is how church started for me, week after week, year after year, as a little girl. We had a beautiful stained glass window of Jesus carrying a lamb. I knew I was that lamb (or at least the one walking by his side). The liturgy said so, "we are his sheep". How interesting for me when I actually found this verse in the Bible! I had no idea as I child that what I read from the front of my hymnal every week was actually scripture. But there was more to it...more that we didn't read every week in church.

The "more" goes on to say that "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert...I was angry with that generation; ...They are a people whose hearts go astray and they have not known my ways. So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest'" (FYI: at Meribah and Massah, the Israelites complained to Moses of being thirsty and questioned if God was even with them in this trip. See Exodus 17)

Why didn't we read that part? Why weren't we schooled in the importance to not turn a deaf ear on the Lord? And what was that about rest? Never enter His rest?!? Well that just doesn't settle well with me at all!

I like rest. And God says that if I am to enter His rest, I must not turn a deaf ear to Him; I must come to know His ways. And if I am to hear Him, it is preferential that I be quiet (Habakkuk 2:20, Zephaniah 1:7); be still (Psalm 46:10); and wait on Him (Psalm 37:7). To avoid his anger (that would prevent me from resting) I am to seek a quiet and disciplined life (Zephaniah 2:3). God likes quiet so much, He uses it as an illustration for Himself; in 1 Kings 19:12, Elijah didn't find God in any of the powerful noisy things, but only in the quiet, "gentle whisper". There is great power in quiet and God knows it. Perhaps my favorite illustration is in Isaiah 18:4 when God says that He, himself, will be quiet "like shimmering heat in the sunshine".

Jesus liked being quiet and repeatedly told people to do things quietly. In Matthew 5 Jesus retreated to a quiet place and told people (in chapter 6) to do good things for others "quietly" and to find a "quiet" place to pray. The leper he healed in chapter 8 was told to go and show himself "quietly" to the priests. When we are quiet, we please God for "a gentle and quiet spirit...is of great worth in God's sight" (1 Peter 3:4)

I want to learn to quiet my soul like the Psalmist in 131. To sit quietly, like Mary, at the feet of Jesus and to bask in the quiet and powerful warmth radiating from Him. And as I sit at His feet, the results, He says, will be "peace...quietness and confidence forever. (I) will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes,(and) in undistrubed places of rest" (Is. 32:17-18). Now that's a promise I can rest in!