Seeking quietness

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you.   1 Thessalonians 4:11

Long before the age of jets, the Internet, or television, theologian Arthur Pink wrote the following: “What man despises, God esteems; and what man admires, He abominates. The world is mad, and speed is one of the ‘gods’ which is now worshipped by the multitudes. And living as we yet are in the world, God’s own people are infected with its evil spirit. Much need has each of us to beg the Lord to lay His cooling and calming hand upon the feverish ‘flesh’ in us.”

Do you ever ask yourself what Jesus would do if He were living among us here today? Would He jam more and more into His schedule, or would He walk away from the frenetic activity of life today and find a quiet place for solitude? Would He leave His computer and mobile phone behind to listen to the wind as it blows through the trees or ponder the awesome, sometimes ferocious sound of silence?

Isaiah told us that “in quietness and trust is your strength” but then added, “but you would have none of it” (Isaiah 30:15). Were he alive today, he could say the same thing. Whose fault is it that life is so busy? Obviously, it is our own doing. Therefore the undoing of our busyness is also our obligation and should be one of the first orders of business.

When Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, he told them to study to be quiet (1 Thessalonians 4:11 kjv) – something which was commanded. The word “quiet” means “to cease from labor, to hold your peace, to be still.”

As God tells us in Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it does not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. I John 3:1-3, 6