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Ten Minute Mystic: Part 2: Growing in Piety Through Silence (3)

A Place of Weakness

David often had moments in life when he came to a place of weakness.  A point of panic.  A time of terror.  An area of anxiety.  Goliath may be the most famous incarnation of one of those instances.  But there were others.  Many others.

In Ps. 62, David journals about one of those other places of weakness.  We have no tradition suggesting when David wrote this psalm or to what situation it was addressed.  Those are details we will never know.  What we do know, however, is that the psalm describes David’s descent to a position of powerlessness.

“3How long will all of you attack a man to batter him, like a leaning wall, a tottering fence?  4They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehood.  They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse.”  (Ps. 62:3-4 ESV).

David is being attacked.  Not just by a man.  But by a mob.  David refers to “all” who are assaulting him.  David describes this crowd battering him.  He pictures himself as a leaning wall and a tottering fence.  David is so frail that he is about to go down for the count.  He is so fragile that he is about to topple over.

David writes of being in a “high position.”  Perhaps he is already king.  But these enemies seek to remove him from power.  They seek his downfall.  And while in public they bless him with their mouths, in private they curse him.  They cannot wait until he is gone for good.

Some of you can identify with the specifics of David’s trial.  Even this week, someone has been attacking you.  Unfairly.  Undeservedly.  And unremittingly.  You lie wounded and bruised.  You feel like a leaning wall or a tottering fence.

Others of you can identify with the general nature of David’s hurts.  No person has been attacking you.  But you still feel like you’re in a war.  The attack comes from a terrible temptation.  Or a certain situation.  Or a denied dream.  You feel like you’re going down for the count.

A Place of Strength

But as is so often the case, David does not remain in this place of weakness.  Ps. 62 is the testimony of how David moves from a place of weakness to a place of strength. 

Twice in the psalm David sings of newfound strength:

“2 He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.”  (Ps. 62:2 ESV)

“6 He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken.  7On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God.  8 Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.”  (Ps. 62:6-8 ESV).

If David was once sinking in the sand, he’s now resting on the rock.  If David was once defenseless in the desert, he’s now fixed firm in a fortress.  If Dave was once fearful on the firing line, he’s now recovering in a refuge.  God has become his rock, his fortress and his refuge.

David has moved from a place of weakness to a place of strength.

It is possible for you to make a similar move.  You too can transition from a place of weakness, hurt, shame, or pain to a position of strength, healing, confidence, and safety.  You do not have to remain a leaning wall or a tottering fence.  You do not have to go down for the count.  You too can find a rock, a fortress and a refuge.

But the question is, “How?”  How did David experience such a radical move in his life?  How do we journey from the place of weakness to the place of strength?

 

A Quiet Pause

David answers that question twice in this psalm:

“1For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.” (Ps. 62:1 ESV)

 

“5For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.” (Ps. 62:5 ESV)

To move from weakness to strength David did not do something.  He did nothing.  Twice he recounts how he waited in silence.  Twice he boasts about ceasing all activity and simply resting.  Twice he records stopping his feet, shutting his mouth, and just standing still.

Some scholars have thought that David is referencing a visit to a holy place.  We don’t know.  What we do know is that it was only when David’s movement stopped that his healing started.  It was only when David’s to-do list was lost that his spiritual vitality was found.  It was only when David did nothing that God began to do everything.

The movement from weakness to strength comes in three simple words: “wait in silence.”  The more we learn to wait in silence, the more we gain strength, courage, and life.  It can come in many forms: spending a few minutes in quiet at the beginning or end of each day, reserving a half day each week for Sabbath with God, or planning a yearly retreat to a place of solitude and rest.  But there is no escaping this fundamental fact.  Strength comes only when we wait in silence.

Our Need for Silence

Tony Jones writes, “All in all, no spiritual discipline is more universally acclaimed as necessary than the practice of silence.  The Desert Fathers retreated to the wild lands of Egypt; Rufinus, who toured the desert to visit as many of the Fathers as he could, wrote to Jerome, ‘There is a huge silence and a great quiety here.’…Likewise, Benedict fashioned much of his Rule around the keeping of silence…Present day spiritual writers commend silence as well.”[i]  Silence is absolutely essential to our growth in piety.

Yet it is often one of the hardest practices to embrace.  Gary Holloway writes, “For many of us, the hardest thing we can imagine doing is to do nothing.  We have been taught from childhood to be busy, filling each moment of the day with activity.  Our churches often teach us that to waste time is sinful.  We should always be working for the Lord…Everyone knows that the more you work and the harder you try, the more you accomplish.  Even in the spiritual life…Everyone knows that but God.”[ii]  Similarly, Adele Calhoun comments, “When we come upon silence, we fill it.  We cram it with something else we can learn or do or achieve.  We break the silence of travel with an iPod, the silence of the evening hours with the TV or computer, the silence of sleep with an alarm clock.  Every part of our life is inundated with words—urgent words, random words, trivial words, hurtful words, managing words, religious words, and on and on.”[iii]

In this world of noise and in our addiction to words, we need quiet and wordless time with God.  Primarily during this time we “are attending to him who loves us, who is near to us, and who draws us to himself.”[iv]   The basic goal of silence is “to free myself from the addiction to and distraction of noise so I can be totally present to the Lord.”[v]

Expectations

What can we expect from this time?  Thomas Keating urges us to have come with few expectations and to come in the posture of a beginner: “One cannot begin to face the real difficulties of the life of prayer and meditation unless one is first perfectly content to be a beginner and really experience himself as one who knows little or nothing, and has a desperate need to learn the bare rudiments.  Those who think they ‘know’ from the beginning will never, in fact, come to know anything…We do not want to be beginners.  But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!”[vi]

Gary Holloway provides these thoughts: [vii]  After a week of being silent before God for ten to twenty minutes a day, you may experience many things.

  • First, you might feel some physical or emotional pain.  Difficult emotions and experiences which have been suppressed may suddenly surface.  (Indeed, as Adele Calhoun writes, silence can be a bit like a spiritual can-opener: “Like a can opener the silence opens up the contents of your heart, allowing us deeper access to God than we experience at other times.  As we remain in silence, the inner noise and chaos will begin to settle.  Our capacity to open up wider and wider to God grows.  The holy One has access to places we didn’t even know exist in the midst of the hubbub.”[viii])
  • Second, you might feel euphoria or deep joy as you are submerged in a peace beyond understanding and gain a sense of God’s nearness. 
  • Third, you might feel nothing.  You might begin to think silence is a waste of time.  But, “Silence is…not about feeling.  It is not about creating experiences.  Feelings may come.  If so, embraced them as gifts or face them with God as challenges.  You might feel nothing.  That is also fine.  Silence is not our attempt to be spiritual or create spiritual experiences.  Instead, it is an act of pure faith.  We trust that God blesses those who spend time with him.  We believe, even when we do not see, that God is working in us in the silence.”[ix]  Thomas Merton echoes this line: “If we bear with hardship in prayer and wait patiently for the time of grace, we may well discover that meditation and prayer are very joyful experiences.  We should not, however, judge the value of our meditation by ‘how we feel.”[x]

 

Though, at times, we may wonder if our times in silence are “productive” or “useful,” we must trust that God is at work in hidden and unknown ways during this time.  I find great inspiration in these quotes which Merton cities:

  • Desert Father Ammonas (4th Century): “Behold, my beloved, I have shown you the power of silence, how thoroughly it heals and how fully pleasing it is to God.  Wherefore I have written to you to show yourselves strong in this work you have undertaken, so that you may know it is by silence that the saints grew, that it was because of silence that the power of God dwelt in them, because of silence that the mysteries of God were known to them.”[xi]
  • Peter of Celles (Middle Ages): “God works in us while we rest in him.  Beyond all grasping is this work of the Creator, itself creative, this rest.  For such work exceeds all rest, in its tranquility.  This rest, in its effect, shines forth as more productive than any work.”[xii]

 

Spend ten minutes in silence with God today.  Setting a timer can help you forget the time and just focus on God and settle into the quiet.  Intentionally place yourself in the presence of God and become quiet.  You’ll begin to hear voices, traffic, your breathing, distracting thoughts, etc.  Let each distraction go.  Gently return to God each time by repeating something like “Here I am.”  Let that distraction float down river.  Be with God.[xiii]


[i] Tony Jones, The Sacred Way (Zondervan, 2005), 39-40.

[ii] Gary Holloway, You Might Be Too Busy If…Spiritual Practices for People in a Hurry (Leafwood Publishers, 2009), 41.

[iii] Calhoun, 108.

[iv] Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (HarperSanFrancico, 1992), 158.

[v] Adele Calhoun, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook (IVP, 2005), 107.

[vi] Thomas Keating Open Mind Open Heart (Continuum, 1992)), 37.

[vii] Holloway, 46-47.

[viii] Calhoun, 109.

[ix] Holloway, 46-47.

[x]Thomas Merton Contemplative Prayer (Image Books, 1996), 34.

[xi] Ibid., 42.

[xii] Ibid., 59.

[xiii] Calhoun, 109-110.

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