“My dear Wormwood: Music and silence--how I detest them both!" ~Silence with God

And after He had sent the multitudes away, He went up to the mountain by Himself to pray; and when it was evening, He was there alone.
Matthew 14:23

“But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you."

Matthew 6:6

O NOW I see what beauties lay
O’er summer’s close,
And autumn’s calm breathing with decay,
With her last dying rose,
Sweeter than spring.

A calm awaiting seems to lie
O’er leaf and wave;
A calm undressing, all so silently,
For calmness of the grave,
Unrepining.

The noiseless brook its banks along
Winds like a lake,
Save stilly heard a rippling under-song,
Whose passing eddies make
Silence more still.

Upon the dread and dim serene,
Each thought that breaks,
And every breath that stirs the quiet scene,
A mighty Being speaks,
Whom we await.

Such is the awful calm they learn
Beneath Thy cross
Who fain would sit, looking for Thy return,
And count the world but loss
Thy love to gain.

ISAAC WILLIAMS
The Banks in Autumn

        “My dear Wormwood: Music and silence--how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell--though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express, no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise--Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile--Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it. Research is in progress."

C.S. LEWIS
The Screwtape Letters

        You whom the Holy Spirit is urging to act that your souls may become the Bride of God, must….”sit alone and keep silence” as the prophet says…. Get away then I tell you, not physically but in mind and intention, in spirit and devotion; for the Lord Christ is Himself a Spirit, and it is spiritual solitude that He requires of you, though bodily withdrawal is not without its uses, when it may be had, especially in a time of prayer.  You have His own commandment in the matter, “When you pray, enter into your room and when you have shut the door, pray.”  He, Himself practiced what He preached. He would spend all night in prayer, not only hiding from the crowds, but not allowing any even of His closest friends to come with Him.  Even at the last, when He was hastening to His willing death, though He had taken three with Him, He withdrew even from them when He desired to pray.  You must do likewise, when you want to pray.
        He who would pray must choose the best time to do so as well as the best place.  A time of leisure is the fittest and most suitable, especially the silence of the night; for prayer is freer in the night and purer too.   How confidently does prayer mount up, unknown to any except God and the holy angel who receives it on the heavenly altar! How acceptable and clear it is in its modesty then, how peaceful and serene with no noise or interruption to disturb it!

 BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX
 1090-1153
 On Loving God

"A man’s will should be an echo, not a voice; the echo of God..." Devotional on Silence before God

My soul, wait silently for God alone,

For my hope is from Him.

Psalm 62:5

Come, my people, enter into your rooms,

And shut your doors behind you;

Hide yourself, as it were, for a little moment…

Isaiah 26:20

“But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”

Matthew 6:6

That silence is first a silence of the will. The plain meaning of this phrase is resignation; and resignation is just a silent will. Before the throne of the Great King, His servants are to stand like those long rows of attendants we see on the walls of Eastern temples, silent, with folded arms, straining their ears to hear, and bracing their muscles to execute his whispered commands, or even his gesture and his glance. A man’s will should be an echo, not a voice; the echo of God, not the voice of self. It should be silent, as some sweet instrument is silent till the owner’s hand touches the keys. Like the boy-prophet in the hush of the sanctuary, below the quivering light of the dying lamps, we should wait till the awful voice calls, and then answer, ‘Speak, Lord! for Thy servant heareth.’ Do not let the loud utterances of your own wills anticipate, nor drown, the still, small voice in which God speaks. Bridle impatience till He does. If you cannot hear His whisper, wait till you do. Take care of running before you are sent. Keep your wills in equipoise till God’s hand gives the impulse and direction.

         Such a silent will is a strong will. It is no feeble passiveness, no dead indifference, no impossible abnegation that God requires, when He requires us to put our wills in accord with His. They are not slain, but vivified, by such surrender; and the true secret of strength lies in submission. The secret of blessedness is there, too, for our sorrows come because there is discord between our circumstances and our wills, and the measure in which these are in harmony with God is the measure in which we shall feel that all things are blessings to be received with thanksgiving. But if we will take our own way, and let our own wills speak before God speaks, or otherwise than God speaks, nothing can come of that but what always has come of it—blunders, sins, misery, and manifold ruin.

We must keep our hearts silent too. The sweet voices of pleading affections, the loud cry of desires and instincts that roar for their food like beasts of prey, the querulous complaints of disappointed hopes, the groans and sobs of black-robed sorrows, the loud hubbub and Babel, like the noise of a great city, that every man carries within, must be stifled and coerced into silence. We have to take the animal in us by the throat, and sternly say, ‘Lie down there and be quiet.’ We have to stop our ears to the noises around, however sweet the songs, and to close many an avenue through which the world’s music might steal in. He cannot say, ‘My soul is silent unto God,’ whose whole being is buzzing with vanities and noisy with the din of the marketplace. Unless we have something, at least, of that great stillness, our hearts will have no peace, and our religion no reality.

            As the flowers follow the sun, and silently hold up their petals to be tinted and enlarged by his shining, so must we, if we would know the joy of God, hold our souls, wills, hearts, and minds still before Him, whose voice commands, whose love warms, whose truth makes fair, our whole being. God speaks for the most part in such silence only. If the soul be full of tumult and jangling noises, His voice is little likely to be heard. It is the calm lake which mirrors the sun, the least cat’s-paw wrinkling the surface wipes out all the reflected glories of the heavens. If we would mirror God our souls must be calm. If we would hear God our souls must be silence.

         The silence of the soul before God is no mere passiveness. It requires the intensest energy of all our being to keep all our being still and waiting upon Him. So put all your strength into the task, and be sure that your soul is never so intensely alive as when in deepest abnegation it waits hushed before God.

ALEXANDER MACLAREN

Expositions of Holy Scripture

SILENCE TO GOD ~Psalm 62

"Love to God grows out of the love of God."

Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ.

II Thessalonians 3:5

Jesus, the very thought of Thee

With sweetness fills the breast;

But sweeter far Thy face to see,

And in Thy presence rest.

No voice can sing, nor heart can frame,

Nor can the memory find

A sweeter sound than Thy blest Name,

O Savior of mankind!

O hope of every contrite heart,

O joy of all the meek,

To those who fall, how kind Thou art!

How good to those who seek!

But what to those who find? Ah, this

Nor tongue nor pen can show;

The love of Jesus, what it is,

None but His loved ones know.

O Jesus, Thou the beauty art

Of angel worlds above;

Thy Name is music to the heart,

Inflaming it with love.

BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

The first precious thing which we are to enter is the love of God. Beloved, we know the love of God in various ways. Many know it by having heard of it, even as a blind man may thus know the charms of an Alpine landscape. Poor knowledge this! Others of us have tasted of the love of God, have talked about the love of God, have prayed and have sung concerning the love of God. All very well, but Paul meant a dove of a brighter feather. To be directed into the love of God is quite another thing from all that we can be told of it. A fair garden is before us. We look over the wall and are even al- lowed to stand at the door while one hands out to us baskets of golden apples. This is very delightful. Who would not be glad to come so near as this to the garden of heavenly delights?

Yet it is something more to be shown the door, to have the latch lifted, to see the gateway opened and to be gently directed into the Paradise of God. This is what is wanted—that we may be directed into the love of God. Oh, that we may feel something of it while we meditate upon it! Beloved, we come, when we are taught of the Spirit of God, to enter into the love of God by seeing its central importance. We see that the love of God is the source and center, fountain and foundation of all our salvation, and of all else that we receive from God.

At first we are much taken up with pardoning Grace. We are largely engrossed with those royal robes of righteousness with which our nakedness is covered. We are delighted with the viands of the marriage banquet—we eat the fat and we drink the sweet. What else would you expect from starving souls admitted to the abundant supplies of heavenly Grace? Afterwards we begin more distinctly to think of the love that spread the feast, the love that provided the raiment, the love that invited us to the banquet and gently led us to take our place in it. This does not always come at first.

But I pray that none of us may be long receiving the gifts of love without kissing the hand of love. That none of us may be content to have had much forgiven without coming and washing the feet of our forgiving Lord with our tears and declaring our deep and true love to Him. O saved soul, may the Lord fill you with personal love to that personal Savior through whom all blessings come to you! Remember, you have all good things because God loves you!         

When this great world, the sun, and moon and stars, had not yet flashed the morning of their little day, the LORD GOD loved His people with an everlasting love. In the Divine purposes, which were not of yesterday, nor even of that date of which Scripture speaks as “In the beginning”—when the Lord created the heavens and the earth—God loved His own people.

He had chosen you, thought of you, provided for you and made ten thousand forecasts of loving kindness towards you before the earth was. Beloved Believer, you were engraved on the hands of Christ even then. Oh that the Lord would direct you into the antiquity of His love. It shall make you greatly prize that love to think that it had no beginning and shall never, never have an end.

“The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God.” Beloved, let the love of God to you flow into your hearts and abide there till it settles down and bears on its surface the cream of love to God, yielded by your own heart. The only way to love God is to let God’s love to you dwell in your soul till it transforms your soul into itself. Love to God grows out of the love of God.

C.H. SPURGEON ~June 1888

Sermons

"Jesus ever lives to make intercession for us."

But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; I AM here. Do not be afraid.”

Matthew 14:27

“But I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail…”

Luke 22:32

Breast the wave, Christian,

When it is strongest;

Watch for day, Christian,

When the night is longest;

Onward and upward still

Be thine endeavour;

Seek the rest that remains

To thee forever.

Fight the fight, Christian,

Jesus is o'er thee;

Run the race, Christian,

Heaven is before thee:

He who hath promised it,

Faltereth never;

He who hath loved so well,

Loveth forever.

JOSEPH STAMMERS

All the saints in glory, headed by Christ their Leader, came out of great tribulation. And if the Elder Brother- He, the sinless Savior, He, the blessed Son of the Father- was not exempt from tribulation, shall we ask, shall we desire it? 
  Diversified are the storms of God's people, deriving their character often from the peculiar position in which each believer is placed in life, just as the storms, which sweep the ocean, derive their intensity from the latitudes in which they occur. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers out of them all." "Through much tribulation we are to enter the kingdom." But oh, how helpful in our heavenly course are these rude and fierce tempests! Many of the Lord's people will testify that their souls make little or no real progress in the divine life, but under the pressure of adversity. As we have remarked, light breezes and smooth seas help them on but little. The vessel is so slow sailing, and withal so heavily laden, that nothing but strong winds and tempestuous waves, and cross seas, speed it on in its heavenly way. To change the figure: just as the tempest impels the root more deeply and firmly into the earth, the tree thus acquiring vigor and growth by the very means that threatened to sweep it from the forest, so "God's trees of righteousness," trees of His own right-hand planting, are "rooted and grounded" in Christ and in faith and in love by those very trials, afflictions, and sorrows which seemed the most adverse to their well-being. Affliction is a sowing time, a growing time, a harvest time- the discipline not pleasant now, but afterwards yielding the peaceable fruits of righteousness to those who are exercised thereby. 
 

But for the storm how little should we know of His power who controls our tempest, and of His love who quells our fears. 
  And where was Jesus while the disciples were in the storm? He was alone in the mountain in prayer- in prayer for them! Why did He withdraw His presence well knowing that dangers and fears awaited them? That they might learn the great lesson of the Christian life, namely, that, "without Me you can do nothing." It is thus the Lord now deals with us. He will have us know our weakness, and dependence upon Him our strength. He will wean us from ourselves, and deaden us to the world, and teach us where our great supplies of grace and power and comfort are. 
  And all this time of our earthly storm and danger, where is Christ? He is “in heaven, now to appear in the presence of God for us." He is in glory praying for His Church. With a sleepless eye of love resting upon our storm-tossed souls, He is interceding for us with the Father, that our afflictions engulf us not, that our faith fail not, that our fears prevail not, but that we may be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. 
  Oh how sweet a truth is the intercession of Christ! 
  Is there any thought more strengthening, animating, and promotive of our holiness, than that Christ is each moment praying for us in heaven? We ask the prayers of the Lord's people, and are strengthened thereby. How much more needed, precious, and prevalent the intercession of Christ!

"Jesus ever lives to make intercession for us." Exalted though He is in glory, the same heart beats within that breast that throbbed and sorrowed and bled on earth. 
  Encircled by myriads of glorified spirits, He is not neglectful of His saints below. He trod the path you now tread, and sanctified it. He passed through your temptation, and foiled it. He drank your bitter cup, and sweetened it. He traveled through your darkness, and illumined it. He bore your cross, and lightened it. He suffered your persecution, and disarmed it. He experienced your death, and plucked the sting from the last foe. He lay in the grave, and left an undying light and fragrance there. Look up to Him, then, as your Intercessor. Nothing that He asks the Father is refused Him. He never receives a denial. Your suit, blended with His own, prevails in the Chancery of heaven. And when through suffering, or languor, or sorrow you cannot pour out your needs yourself, Christ is praying for you, employing His interest in your behalf with God. And Him, the Father hears always.


OCTAVIUS WINSLOW

“I am not anxious to know the why, but only the where, of God...." Part II

In all their affliction He was afflicted,

And the Angel of His Presence saved them;

In His love and in His mercy He redeemed them,

And He lifted them and carried them all the days of old.

Isaiah 63:9

The LORD replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Exodus 33:14

 Nothing is small!

No lily-muffled hum of summer bee

But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;

No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere;

…Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

But the Angel of His Presence cannot mean anything to us unless we realize what kind of presence it is of which the prophet speaks. It means, first of all, a gracious, friendly, loving, sympathizing presence. God is with us in our troubles, not merely because He has to be there, since He is everywhere. He is there because He wants to be. Just as truly as you desire to be near your friends, your children, when they suffer, just so truly does God desire and choose to be near us in our afflictions. He would not be away from us even if He could. He is not present as a mere spectator, looking at us curiously while we suffer. He is with us as one who has the deepest interest in it all, feels all that happens to us, cares infinitely for us through it all.

         His Presence must save us, first of all, from the sense of meanness, littleness, unworthiness which embitters life and makes sorrow doubly hard to bear. The Presence of God must bring a sense of dignity, of elevation into our existence. It was a great king who once said, “Where I sleep, there is the palace.” The life that has the Presence of God in it can neither be trivial nor unworthy.

         The Angel of God’s face saves us from the sense of weakness, ignorance, incompetence, which overwhelms us in the afflictions of life. We feel not only that we are powerless to protect ourselves against trouble, but that we are not able to get the good out of it that ought to come to us. We cannot interpret our sorrow aright. We cannot see the real meaning of them. We cannot reach our hand through the years to catch “the far-off interest of tears.” We say to ourselves in despair, “God only knows what it means.” And if we do not believe that God is with us, then that thought shuts us up in the darkness, puts the interpretation of the mystery far away from us, locks us up in the prison house of sorrow and leaves the key in heaven. But if we believe that God is with us, then the word of despair becomes a word of hope.

         The Angel of God’s face saves us from the sense of loneliness, which is unbearable. Companionship is essential to happiness A solitary Eden would have been no Paradise. The deepest of all miseries is the sense of absolute isolation. In this painful solitude the present friendship of God is the only sure consolation. Nothing can divide us from Him—not misunderstanding, nor coldness, nor selfishness, nor scorn—for none of these things are possible to Him. Nothing can divide us from Him except our own sin, and that He has forgiven and taken away and blotted out by His great mercy in Christ.

         “I am not anxious to know the why, but only the where, of God. It matters little to me for what purpose He walks upon the storm, nor is it of deadly consequence whether or not He shall say, ‘Peace, be still.’ The all-important thing is that the feet upon the sea should be His feet—His, and not another’s. Tell me that, and I ask no more. There is all the difference in the world between a silent room and an empty room. There is a companionship where there is no voice. Is it not written, ‘In Thy presence is fullness of joy’? In the very sense that my Father is there, though He speak not, though He whisper not…there comes to my heart a great calm.”(George Matheson)

JAMES HASTINGS

Isaiah

We know that the divinest thing in this world is love. That in God which is greatest is not power, not the shining splendor of deity, but love, which shows itself in plain, lowly ways. When the disciples came to the Master, saying, “Show us the Father,” they were thinking of some brilliant display, some revealing of God which would startle men. Jesus replied, “Have I been so long with you and yet have you not known Me?” He meant that the truest revealing of God to men is not in great theophanies, but in a ministry of gentleness, helpfulness, and kindness, such as Jesus had wrought through all the years.

         Mrs. Browning tells us that nature is full of the glory of God. Every common bush is afire with God for those who have eyes to see the brightness. But the truth is that most of us have no eyes for the splendor. Here and there is one who in the presence of God’s revealing, takes off his shoes in reverence. But people in general see nothing of divine glory, and only “sit ‘round and eat blackberries." We all rob ourselves continually of untold blessings which might easily be made ours if we knew the Christ who is always so near to us.

J.R. MILLER

For the Best Things

~This post is dedicated to Naghmeh & Saeed Abedini as they walk apart during this trial of separation.

"We are so dear to Him as His children that He feels both with & for us."

In all their affliction He was afflicted,

And the Angel of His Presence saved them;

In His love and in His mercy He redeemed them,

And He lifted them and carried them all the days of old.

Isaiah 63:9

Lord, Thou dost look and love is in Thine Eyes,

Thy heart is set upon me day and night,

Thou stoopest low to set me far above:

O Lord, that I may love Thee makes me wise;

That I may see and love Thee grant me sight;

And give me love that I may give Thee love.

CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI

         It is one Person all along the line, one character of patient loving-kindness and mercy that is revealed to us in both Testaments—more obscurely in the prophecies of the Old, more abundantly in the fulfillment of the New. “In all their affliction He was afflicted.” Wonderful are those words. The more carefully they are studied, the more surprising do they appear. It is only gradually that their meaning grows upon the mind, either filling it with increasing wonder or, where faith is strong enough to receive it, awakening overpowering feelings of gratitude and adoration. It must be understood at the outset that God’s suffering is sympathetic. He shares in our afflictions, inasmuch as He has sympathy with us therein. We are so dear to Him as His children that He feels both with and for us.

         Love is the glory of God, as it is the goodness of man, and love is essentially sympathetic. There was never a being on earth so deep in His peace and so essentially blessed as Jesus Christ. Even His agony itself is scarcely an exception. There is no joy so grand as that which has a form of tragedy. We are never so happy, so essentially blessed, as when we suffer well, wearing out our life in sympathies spent on the evil and undeserving, burdened heavily in our prayers, struggling on through secret Gethsemanes, and groaning before God, in groans audible to God alone, for those who have no mercy on themselves.

         When Jesus came and lived among us the heart of God was laid bare, and every one can see in the Gospel that patient wistful love which inhabits the secret place of the universe. As the father sits upon the housetop, and watches the crest of the hill, that he may catch the first glimpse of the returning prodigal…we learn the expectation of God. As Jesus takes into His arms little children whom superior people have despised, and casts His charity over penitent women whom Pharisees cannot forgive, and mourns at the tomb of Lazarus over a friend whom He cannot afford to lose, one learns the graciousness of God. The Cross is not only the heart of human life, it is also in the heart of God. He is the chief of all sufferers, because He is the chief of all lovers.

         “The Angel of His Presence”—This singularly beautiful expression carries with it associations which must be dear to every heart….how the mind loves to linger on the music of those words, and how near they seem to bring us to high and holy things, things unspeakably precious and helpful to our souls!  No one can stand in much doubt as to what they mean, strange and unaccustomed though the phrase may be. The “Angel of the Lord” is an expression often used in the Old Testament to denote a special manifestation of God Himself; it does not denote a messenger coming from God; it frequently signifies a coming of God into human affairs. The still stronger phrase, “the Angel of His Presence” certainly denotes any form under which God chooses to make His immediate presence felt by His children….it is always a means whereby God Himself comes right into human experience to help and heal and save.

      Our Lord Jesus Christ has become to the world in which we live the Angel of the Presence, the Presence that saves. In Him God has laid bare His own heart and shown us the Divine that indwells.  Never again can we think of God except in terms of Jesus.

JAMES HASTINGS

Isaiah

"They obey the call of the Lord, the Giver of Life..."

And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, “Rejoice!”  So they came and held Him by the feet and worshiped Him.  Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me.”

Matthew 28:9-10

Consider the lilies of the field....

Matthew 6:28

O voice of the Beloved! Thy bride hath heard Thee say, 

“Rise up, My love, My fair one,

Arise and come away.

For lo, ‘tis past, the winter,

The winter of thy year,

The rain is past and over,

The flowers on earth appear.

“And now the time of singing

Is come for every bird;

And over all the country

The turtledove is heard;

The fig her green fruit ripens,

The vines are in their bloom;

Arise and smell their fragrance;

My love, My fair one, come!”

Yea, Lord! Thy Passion over,

We know this life of ours

Hath passed from death and winter

To leaves and budding flowers;

No more Thy rain of weeping

In drear Gethsemane;

No more the clouds and darkness,

That veiled Thy bitter Tree.

Our Easter Sun is risen!

And yet we slumber long,

And need Thy Dove’s sweet pleading

To waken prayer and song.

Oh breathe upon our deadness,

Oh shine upon our gloom;

Lord, let us feel Thy presence

And rise and live and bloom.

JACKSON MASON~1889

O Voice of the Beloved!

      Consider the lilies of the fields.  We must take our Lord’s words exactly.  He is speaking of the lilies, the bulbous plants which spring into flower in countless thousands every spring over the downs of Eastern lands.  All the winter they are dead, unsightly roots, hidden in the earth.  But no sooner does the sun of spring shine upon their graves, than they rise into sudden life and beauty, as it pleases God, and every seed takes its own peculiar body.  Sown in corruption, they are raised in incorruption; sown in weakness, they are raised in power; sown in dishonour, they are raised in glory; delicate, beautiful in colour, perfuming the air with fragrance; types of immortality, fit for the crowns of angels.

      Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.  For even so is the Resurrection of the dead.  Yes, not without a divine providence~yea, a divine inspiration~has the blessed Eastertide been fixed, by the Church of all ages, as the season when the earth shakes off her winter’s sleep; when the birds come back, and the flowers begin to bloom, when every seed which falls into the ground and dies, and rises again with a new body, is a witness to us of the Resurrection of Christ; and a witness, too, that we shall rise again; that in us, as in it, life shall conquer death; when every bird that comes back to sing and build among us, every flower that blows, is a witness to us of the Resurrection of the Lord and of our Resurrection….

      They obey the call of the Lord, the Giver of Life, when they return to life, as a type and a token to us of Christ their Maker, who was dead and is alive again, who was lost in hell on Easter eve, and was found again in heaven forevermore.  And so the resurrection of the earth from her winter’s sleep, commemorates to us, as each blessed Eastertide comes round, the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and is a witness to us that some day life shall conquer death, light conquer darkness, righteousness conquer sin, joy conquer grief; when the whole creation, which groaneth and travaileth in pain until now, shall have brought forth that of which it travaileth in labour~even the new heavens and the new earth, wherein shall be neither sighing nor sorrow, but God shall wipe away tears from all eyes.

 CHARLES KINGSLEY 
                                                              

Out of the Deep