Be Still & Know
Read Psalm 46:10-11
Tattoo’s owner shut his leash in the door so he could help his wife carry a load to the car. Forgetting the dog was there, the owner pulled onto the road and started home, with Tattoo the basset hound trailing along behind. At first it was like going for a walk, but as the speed increased and the distance lengthened, Tattoo began to have problems keeping up. The people who loved him the most were unaware of the trouble he was in. Before they got to the main highway, a motorcycle police officer noticed the trailing dog. The owners were horrified by the ordeal Tattoo had just experienced, even though the dog appeared uninjured.
In his book When You’re All Out of Noodles, Ken Jones writes about a lesson he learned one day at the office.
[When I walked into my office,] I noticed something I had never seen before. It was round, about the size of a dessert plate, and plugged into the wall, giving out a constant noise. It wasn’t a loud noise, just constant. What in the world is that thing? I thought as I stopped to stare.
I finally asked the receptionist about it. She said, “It’s an ambient noise generator. If it’s too quiet in here, we can distinguish the voices in the counseling offices, and we want to protect their privacy. So we bought the noise generator to cover the voices.”
Her explanation made perfect sense to me, but didn’t it have to be louder to mask the conversations, I asked. “No,” she said. “The constancy of the sound tricks the ear so that what is being said can’t be distinguished.”
Interesting, I thought. Very interesting. One kind of noise to cover the sound of another. It made me think and pray.
No wonder, Lord. No wonder I strain to hear what you have to say to me.… The constancy of sound—little noises, soft, inward, ambient thoughts and fears and attitudes—tricks the ears of my inner man and masks your still, small voice.
God isn’t silent. We just have trouble hearing him.
Listening, Silence, Solitude, Spiritual Discernment, Spiritual Disciplines
1 Kings 19:9–13; Ps. 46:10
The water-floods shall not overflow you, neither shall the deep swallow you up. The rock of ages lies at the bottom of the brook; and God will give you firm footing all the way through.
AUGUSTUS M. TOPLADY*
Be still … is not in the first place comfort for the harassed but a rebuke to a restless and turbulent world: ‘Quiet!’—in fact, ‘Leave off!’ It resembles the command to another raging sea: ‘Peace! Be still!
When life seems to be dragging you by the neck, it is time to remember that God has something else planned for you—his rest.
—Jim L. Wilson and Rodger Russell295