Embracing the Quiet Life
Most people I know don’t simply dislike the idea of a quiet life. They are terrified of the notion.
Now I presume you may think—“No way! I know heaps of people who say they’d trade everything for a quiet life.”
Sure, I know quite a number of people who say that too. But I suspect many of them are lying.
The vast majority of Christians in the West have bought into the lie that “busy is best.” “Loud and proud” has become our slogan. We’ve forgotten how to be quiet. We’ve long abandoned the notion of developing stillness as a way of life. These disciplines have somehow slipped from grace and tumbled into the dark closet of the past.
And like all things unknown, we’ve become afraid of what’s lurking in the darkness.
While we like to dim the sanctuary lights during service and quiet the band while we sing “Be still and know that I am God,” the experience of being still and knowing God often remains a foreign concept to us.
Being still terrifies us. Silence is deafening. So we get in our car and reach for the radio. We find ourselves alone at home and turn on a podcast. A conversation lulls, and we clammer and stammer to fill the gap. Headphones hang from countless necks as we fill every moment with mind-numbing noise.
Why?
Consider these reasons:
We prefer entertainment over thinking. Entertainment is easy. Thinking is hard. Entertainment is fun. Thinking involves work. Entertainment slakes our lust for leisure. Thinking reveals personal deficiencies that are painful.
So, we get busy entertaining ourselves to death. Digital entertainment is our go-to drug, but should the networks fail or a storm cut power, we can still go old-school by finding board games or entertainment-driven magazines to distract ourselves. We’ll go to great lengths to entertain ourselves, all in a quest to avoid silence. Silence leads to thinking, and our thoughts terrify us.
Because ignorance is bliss, and realism hurts. Rather than own the solitude, embrace the quiet, and come face-to-face with ourselves, we turn the volume up on life, sing louder, and live in ignorant bliss. We’ve become masters of redirection. Like an illusionist in a cheap sideshow, we practice the dark arts of misdirection and trickery. But, as it turns out, we’re only conning ourselves.
How will we ever have the courage to echo the psalmist’s prayer in Psalm 139:23, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!” when we are too terrified to search our own soul? Embracing solitude and quietness is to reflect on an image of our own self. For many, that’s an image they’re not ready to face.
We equate “stillness” with “passivity”—and passivity is a dirty word! Despite the repeated call of God to simply be still and rest in his salvation, our fear of passivity keeps us fueled for fitful activity. In the gospel, it is as if God once again instructs us, as he did his children beside the Red Sea:
And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” (Ex. 14:13–14)
God is still calling for us to rest.
“I fear that many churches today are filled with modern day prophets of Baal who shout and sing, chant and dance, work and bleed, all in the quest to draw the attention of their inactive god.”
So, rest in the complete victory of God in Christ. Rest in the sin-crushing work of the atoning death of the Son of God. Rest in the living hope of your secured inheritance. Rest from the striving of works-driven righteousness while embracing the rest of the sufficient righteousness of Jesus. The Lord will fight for you. You have only to be silent.
Silent? Boy, are we in trouble!
I fear that many churches today are filled with modern day prophets of Baal who shout and sing, chant and dance, work and bleed, all in the quest to draw the attention of their inactive god.
One of the great symptoms of unbelief manifests itself in our unwillingness to accept a gospel, the gospel as it is, the gospel which says, “It is finished. Christ has accomplished, on your behalf, that which could not be accomplished on your own.”
Godly Aspirations
I know we’re all wired differently. Some of you are already far along the path of quiet obedience, while others are not yet convinced. Either way, I’d encourage you to pick just one area of your life where you can turn the volume down. Make it your aspiration to showcase the gospel in your quiet restfulness. Take Paul’s instruction to the Thessalonian church to heart:
But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. (1 Thess. 4:10–12)
Chris Thomas serves as a Teaching Pastor in a rural church on the East Coast of Australia, just a few hours north of Sydney. Gratefully married, he’s a father of five. He sometimes writes at his blog, The Ploughman’s Rest and serves GCD as the Director of the GCD Writers’ Guild.