Weekly Thing
Psalm 46:10
"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."
Matthew 11:28
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
See also: OT Scripture regarding the Sabbath.
Hello all!
First- there are a few added individuals. This is Yvonne, and the email before you is 'The Weekly Thing.' The purpose of this weekly email is to encourage brothers and sisters in Christ, as the Lord wills. If you do not want to recieve it, just let me know and I can take you off of the list.
Second- I feel I ought to note, however unimportant it may be do so, that much of the Scripture references that I use are looked up (in context as well) via Biblegateway.com. It's very handy. I recommend it.
Recently, I've been reading a book called 'Intruding Upon the Timeless: Meditatios on Art, Faith, and Mystery' by Gregory Wolfe. It's primarily about Christian faith in relationship to art/writing and post-modernity, and Wolfe brings up something in one of the short chapters that got me thinking... That is, the concept of silence. Silence, by definition, is the "condition or quailty of being still; the abscence of sound, stillness." Wolfe talks about silence as something sacred; pure; a moment unmarred by human intervention/sound... granted, while he was talking more directly about the creative process, I think there's a good bit of thought to offer to the population at large.
The past two or three weeks have left me with relatively little silence. I have utilized the vocal chords God gave me more in these weeks than I think I had in whole month of May (or any month for that matter). I've been somehow plugged into music, plugged into conversations, plugged into every Sound Outlet available to me. Because my bedroom is currently still out-of-order, I have been sleeping in an office humming loudly with computers so even my sleep has been without silence. Things are also constantly rattling around in my mind about college ministry and support raising and moving to Philadelphia. You would think that I would be going crazy at this point with so much "noise." But is this experience uncommon for most of us? I think that, most of the time, we don't really even notice how noisy our daily lives tend to be... The switch is always turned on and the volume is usually on full blast to the point that it seems abnormal to be in the midst of silence. It usually means something is wrong.
However, silence can be such a wonderful and powerful thing. In some ways I would want to picture the God of the universe pulling us aside and saying, "Shut up and worship me. Be quiet and listen to me." Sure that might seem a bit gruff but 1) God is God and 2) if Jesus can overturn tables and use a whip to chase out men selling things in the temple, I think God could tell us to Shut Up if He wanted to. Sometimes, it's the only way we'll get quiet right away. But there's more.
A common contemporary worship song opens with "You're calling me to lay aside the worries of my day; to quite down my busy mind and find a hiding place." While songs aren't Scripture, there's a whole lot to think about when those words come out of our mouths. We're called to set our worries, our busy-ness, our selves aside. All the thoughts that bounce around like crazy in our heads are to be quieted. Every now and then (more often than not!), we need to find a mental/physical quiet place to praise God for who He is.
I pray that each of us will find the significance of silence, that we would rest in the presence of our Lord without being noisy about it... that we would be quiet more often than not. I ask that the Spirit would help us to quiet our minds and our hearts so that we can commune with God and KNOW Him. I also pray that we would continually be refined, becoming more and more like Christ every day... and that we would turn around and praise Him for what He has done, what He is doing, and what He will do.
In love and in Him,
your sister,
Yvonne
P.S. As a reminder, two things... You are free to forward the Weekly to anyone you like. It can also be found online at http://weeklything.blogspot.com
"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."
Matthew 11:28
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
See also: OT Scripture regarding the Sabbath.
Hello all!
First- there are a few added individuals. This is Yvonne, and the email before you is 'The Weekly Thing.' The purpose of this weekly email is to encourage brothers and sisters in Christ, as the Lord wills. If you do not want to recieve it, just let me know and I can take you off of the list.
Second- I feel I ought to note, however unimportant it may be do so, that much of the Scripture references that I use are looked up (in context as well) via Biblegateway.com. It's very handy. I recommend it.
Recently, I've been reading a book called 'Intruding Upon the Timeless: Meditatios on Art, Faith, and Mystery' by Gregory Wolfe. It's primarily about Christian faith in relationship to art/writing and post-modernity, and Wolfe brings up something in one of the short chapters that got me thinking... That is, the concept of silence. Silence, by definition, is the "condition or quailty of being still; the abscence of sound, stillness." Wolfe talks about silence as something sacred; pure; a moment unmarred by human intervention/sound... granted, while he was talking more directly about the creative process, I think there's a good bit of thought to offer to the population at large.
The past two or three weeks have left me with relatively little silence. I have utilized the vocal chords God gave me more in these weeks than I think I had in whole month of May (or any month for that matter). I've been somehow plugged into music, plugged into conversations, plugged into every Sound Outlet available to me. Because my bedroom is currently still out-of-order, I have been sleeping in an office humming loudly with computers so even my sleep has been without silence. Things are also constantly rattling around in my mind about college ministry and support raising and moving to Philadelphia. You would think that I would be going crazy at this point with so much "noise." But is this experience uncommon for most of us? I think that, most of the time, we don't really even notice how noisy our daily lives tend to be... The switch is always turned on and the volume is usually on full blast to the point that it seems abnormal to be in the midst of silence. It usually means something is wrong.
However, silence can be such a wonderful and powerful thing. In some ways I would want to picture the God of the universe pulling us aside and saying, "Shut up and worship me. Be quiet and listen to me." Sure that might seem a bit gruff but 1) God is God and 2) if Jesus can overturn tables and use a whip to chase out men selling things in the temple, I think God could tell us to Shut Up if He wanted to. Sometimes, it's the only way we'll get quiet right away. But there's more.
A common contemporary worship song opens with "You're calling me to lay aside the worries of my day; to quite down my busy mind and find a hiding place." While songs aren't Scripture, there's a whole lot to think about when those words come out of our mouths. We're called to set our worries, our busy-ness, our selves aside. All the thoughts that bounce around like crazy in our heads are to be quieted. Every now and then (more often than not!), we need to find a mental/physical quiet place to praise God for who He is.
I pray that each of us will find the significance of silence, that we would rest in the presence of our Lord without being noisy about it... that we would be quiet more often than not. I ask that the Spirit would help us to quiet our minds and our hearts so that we can commune with God and KNOW Him. I also pray that we would continually be refined, becoming more and more like Christ every day... and that we would turn around and praise Him for what He has done, what He is doing, and what He will do.
In love and in Him,
your sister,
Yvonne
P.S. As a reminder, two things... You are free to forward the Weekly to anyone you like. It can also be found online at http://weeklything.blogspot.com