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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 33. "Study to Keep Quiet."
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"Study to Keep Quiet."
There are four great traits of God to be seen in nature, in His Word, and in His speaking within one's inner spirit.
God is quiet. The earth has grown noisy. Nature is still. There are storm noises and earthquakes, but these result from disturbances above and below. Both the disturbances and the noises are abnormal, not true to nature. Man has become noisy. God is quiet. Noise reveals weakness; something is out of gear or tune. Sound is rhythm. Noise is discord; it is a result of friction always, a jarring of two or more forces. The members of the orchestra are not controlled by the leader's eye; they are free-lancing. Strength is still. It may give a sound, but it is always a sound of stillness. It is rhythmic, harmonious, musical.
God is quiet. He is revealing Himself, all the time, up to the highest possible limit, to His much-loved race of men. But He can come in only through an opened door. He can reveal Himself only to the man who opens his door. Sympathy with God, oneness of spirit with Him, is the key. A spirit of quiet stillness opens the life to this marvelous, quiet God. We can all recall how, in moments of quietness, God has spoken into the inner ear, and we have long remembered what He said. We can remember, too, how at such times His speaking has deepened the quiet in our souls. God would woo us into that quietness of spirit akin to his own, that we may be living again in our native atmosphere— His presence.
To a man absorbed in Christian activity, rushing, pushing, with nerves on tension and blood boiling, who wearily turned to God in prayer, there came one day into the inner ear, as he was on bent knees, a Voice speaking with great softness and equally great clearness, "Study to be quiet." It brought a great hush into his spirit; in the following days it became a veritable sheet-anchor, holding the bark steady in many a storm. Its variations were brooded over that new life might come out of its inner depths; "study to keep quiet"; "be ambitious to be unambitious," in the world's abused meaning of that word ambitious.
Many personal, practical applications, quietly, gradually worked themselves out of it into the fibre of habit. Keep the body quiet, the voice quiet, the eyes quiet, the thoughts, the imagination, the emotions quiet. Put on nature's pneumatic tires and rubber heels. "But," you say, "how self-conscious that must make one!" No, not if you do it quietly, naturally. Quiet does not mean repression. It means the natural expression of mastery, neither overdone nor underdone. Mastery is holding true to nature. Mastery means quietness, the quietness of rhythm, of the sun's swing, of the dew's fall, of God's action in all nature, of the truly masterful man's natural life.
As the days went their rounds, there came trooping to the support of this message, one by one, a group of quiet verses. From out the midst of that stormy Forty-sixth Psalm came the quiet, commanding note, "Be still and know that I am God," (Psa_46:10.) with its alternate reading, "Let go and know that I am God." Let go your will and plans and you will find Somebody's else will and plans for you. Let go of yourself, and you will become conscious of Him. Be still, be still, and you will find God, and in finding Him be finding your own true self, for in His image were we made. But what, a lot of persistent practicing that "be still" does take!
Into the hearts of many thousands have been sung, in classical music, those words of David's, "Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him."(Psa_37:7) The margin of the Revision gives fine coloring, "Be still before the Lord." But the beauty, as well as the deep, simple philosophy, or, rather, the beauty because of the philosophy, comes out best in Luther's translation, "Be silent to God, and let Him mould thee." The wondrous power of silence when it is in God's presence, and towards Him!
The One hundred and seventh Psalm (Psa_107:26-32), which the Hebrews sang responsively in their temple service, pictures vividly such a storm at sea as many a man has known upon the sea of his life, or the inner sea of his heart. But the great change comes when the oft-repeated "they" is changed to "He"—"He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still." His hands sweep the human keyboard and discord gives way to sweet music. And what a wealth of human experience is in the next line, "Then are they glad because they be quiet." The return to quiet is a return to natural life, as planned by the Giver of life.
This vein of gold comes again to the surface in the Gospels. Matthew's kingly narrative gives the imperial touch to the same storm scene on Galilee's blue waters: "He rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm." (Mat_8:23-27) "Rebuked!" Something was wrong; somebody misbehaving; they were raising a storm. The Master appears with His rebuke. He was recognized. There was a great calm. If He were ever recognized and honored there would always be a great calm. And there can be mastery only when there is calm, nature's true condition. A change of figure couples with that this, also from Matthew: "And He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she arose and ministered to them."(Mat_8:15) The riot of fever in the blood, angry faces, green eyes, hooked fingers! His touch— the fever goes, the storm is stilled, a great calm, then service. Only calm hands can serve truly.
The Old Testament brings up a familiar line that has strengthened many a life in stress: "In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." (Isa_30:15) Confidence is quiet. Fear is always flurried. Strength is stored away in quietness. Out of the quiet comes new strength.
That exquisite, simple, Oriental love story, Ruth, has in it a bit that contains meaning for one's heart apart from its original significance: "Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall; for the man will not rest until he have finished the thing this day." (Rth_3:18) We who have Paul's prison psalm" (Php_1:6) find in its confident assertion—"He who began a good work will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ"—good reason for spelling Ruth's "man" with a capital M in our personal thinking of it, and finding in that sweet story fresh stimulus to sitting still.
God revealed Himself to Elijah one morning early in "a sound of gentle stillness." (1Ki_19:12 margin) The shepherd singer says, "He leadeth me beside the waters of quietness." (Psa_23:2) Job's true comforter reminds that much troubled man, "When He giveth quietness, who then can condemn?" (Job_34:29) Solomon's God-given wisdom has this: "A tranquil heart is the life of the flesh." [Pro_14:30 (American Revision)] Fitting the Ninety-first Psalm into its likely historical setting of the thirty-third chapter of Exodus suggests this free translation of its first verse: "He that goeth aside to sit still in the secret place with the Most High shall find Him coming over so close that he shall be lodging under the shadow of the Almighty One." (Psa_91:1, with Exo_33:7-11) These are some of the quiet verses that grew up around that first one. And there are more. They should be looked up slowly, and breathed in deeply.
These statements reveal God. They reveal the true spirit in men who had found God, and were living in Him. They reveal the true spirit of man. Quietness is the native air of man. All his powers work best when they work in an atmosphere of quiet. He can do better work; he can do more; he can do it more easily, for he is moving in his native element.
Quietness is a characteristic of self-mastery, as well as an essential to it. But quietness does not mean sleepiness, stupidness. It does not mean the inactivity of laziness. It means keen alertness to all that is passing, full readiness to respond, with the steam up, and the hand on the throttle while all is still and under control.