Be Still
I want to share some words with you this week from an old sermon by Paul S. Rees, which I found in a book called Evangelical Sermons of Our Day by Andrew Blackwood, published in 1959. The sermon is entitled The Service of Silence, and is based on Psalm 4:4 which says "commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still." Other translations say "be silent", or "in silence reflect".
When last were you truly still or silent? Rees talks about how even in his day the cities were filled with "the three s's: swoosh, screech, and shrillness. The swoosh of huge buses, the screech of brakes and sliding tires, and the shrillness of the policeman's whistle." And then he talks about the three r's: "the rumble of the subway trains below, the rattle of delivery trucks at the curb, and the roar of airplanes above."
He then quotes Dorothy Kilgallen who, speaking about the jackhammers that are all over New York city, said that they "can do worse things to your eardrums than to the pavement."
The Medicine of Sacred Stillness
The Bible was calling people to stillness thousands of years before these machines and noises, and so perhaps this message of spending time in the quiet is even more pertinent for people today. Rees says this: "An age that measures the noise of applause with a meter and reckons the thunder of explosions in decibels needs to reach out for a medicine that isn't found in sleeping tablets. It is found in something much simpler. It is found in a stillness that somehow becomes alive with God."
Have you ever known such stillness? A short time ago Shereen and I spent some time in the Karoo, which is a beautiful and sparse part of our country. One of the places we went to was Sutherland, a tiny little town miles from anywhere. Sitting in our little stone cottage at night, we could hear no cars, no people… Perhaps just the odd cricket or nightbird chirping. The silence was huge and heavy and we could feel our souls loosening up!
When Sacred Silence Transforms the Ordinary
But there was another time of a different sort of silence that comes to mind too. I remember when I was a candidate for the ministry in the Methodist Church, we had to meet with the district board to explain our call and they would then decide if we were ready for the ministry or not. And so a few of us were waiting in the hall at Kempton Methodist Church and there was a nervous energy in the room as we waited.
The ministers on the board eventually came out to begin the proceedings, and after greeting us, Reverend Graham Huxtable opened in prayer. And his prayer was beautiful. He prayed for the Spirit to come and fill and calm the candidates, and as he prayed all that nervous energy was just dissolved, and it felt almost like a blanket of peace fell over that hall. It was a remarkable moment, and when he finished praying there was a silence that was sacred!
"Commune with your own heart," said the Psalmist, "and be still." Going to a far-off small town or countryside might help you to find this stillness. But perhaps God is willing to meet you now, if you would simply take the time to still your mind and commune with Him in prayer.
