For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken. Come let worship the Lord our God – for He is ...
Leader: For God alone our souls wait in silence, for our hope is from him. People: He only is our rock and our salvation, our fortress; we shall not be shaken. On God rests our salvation and our glo...
Jesus is so imperturbable, so calm, and so peaceful that one might think he does not hear the howling of the crowd, which is drunk with hatred… [Pilate] does not understand the use of such an extraord...
Exodus 3:1-14, 1 Kings 19:9-18, Mark 1:35, Matthew 11:28-30, Psalm 46:10
In Lancelot , one of Walker Percy’s final novels, the narrator reflects on his own struggle with idleness and addiction to entertainment. In a poignant scene set outside his Mississippi mansion, ...
Psalm 46:10, 1 Kings 19:9-18, Matthew 5:5-15, Daniel 3:19-27, Exodus 13:21-22, Mark 1:35-39, Luke 5:16, Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Genesis 32:24-30, Psalm 62:1, Hosea 2:14, Habakkuk 2:1, 1 Samuel 3:1-10, Isaiah 26:3
A certain brother went to Abbot Moses in Scete, and asked him for a good word. And the Elder said to him: Go, sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything. An elder said: The monk’s ce...
Holy One, help us be still and know that you are God. Too often we move at such a hectic pace that we neglect our relationship with you. Our lives become full of distractions that are nothing but shif...
Somebody should write a book someday about the silences in Scripture. Maybe somebody already has. “For God alone my soul waits in silence,” the psalmist says (62:1), which is the silence of waiting. O...
A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.
Ronald Rohlheiser tells a true story of a Jewish boy named Mordechai who could not be coaxed into going to school. When he turned six years old, his mother forced him to go, but the process was misera...
Time talks. It speaks more plainly than words. The message it conveys comes through loud and clear. Because it is manipulated less consciously, it is subject to less distortion than the spoken languag...
My entry into solitude often feels like the hard landing of an aircraft that this flight attendant humorously describes: “Ladies and gentlemen, please remain in your seats until Captain Crash and the ...
Loving God, you spoke the earth into motion. Your words have that much power. So instead of continuing to speak to you, we silence ourselves. Please show us our sins and forgive us for them as we list...
For many of us, silence is something we try to avoid, both in conversations and in preaching. But as Richard John Neuhaus aptly describes in his time watching Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his sermo...
God is not silent. It is the nature of God to speak. The second person of the Holy Trinity is called "The Word." The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God's continuous speech. It is the...
The Desert Saint John Climacus placed a strong emphasis on the role of silence in the life of prayer. In his guidebook to the spiritual life, he had this to say: Intelligent silence is the mother of...
The Text The Short Ending or the Long ending? This is not the Easter story we’re looking for. The short ending of Mark is not what we want or expect on Easter Sunday. We want celebration, big music,...
Father, Son, Holy Spirit–our God, Mysterious, Awe-Inspiring, Wonderful, One-in-Three/Three-in-One: You surprise us not with flashing lights, loud crashing noises, and constant activity. You surprise u...
One of the great truths in life is that you can only go so far as you can be trusted. Every time a well-known pastor has a moral failure, the church’s reputation is hurt. This is at least partially wh...
Mark 1:35, Isaiah 32:17, Psalm 141:3, James 3:5, Ecclesiastes 5:2, Proverbs 17:28
Archelaus the 5th century (BC) king of Macedon, was once having his hair cut. His barber, quite verbose like many others in his profession, asked King Archelaus how he would like his hair cut. His res...
When we make room for silence we make room for ourselves.... Silence invites the unknown, the untamed, the wild, the shy, the unfathomable-that which rarely has a chance to surface within us.
Father God: It is sometimes hard for us to understand what You do. We are in trouble. We want You to come rescue us right now, like the cavalry riding over a hill or the Lone Ranger appearing out of n...
Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria, one of the principal cities of the ancient world, once traveled to the monastic colony at Skete in the Egyptian desert. The younger monks were distressed that thei...
1 Peter 2:12, Galatians 3:26-28, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, John 13:34-35, Acts 2:42-47, Matthew 28:19-20, James 2:17-18
In Silence, Shusaku Endo writes of the journey of Portuguese Jesuits journeying to Japan. It is a conversation about those who intend to take the path of Jesus, only to find they are on the path of Ju...
In silence all of our usual patterns assault us.... That is why most people give up rather quickly. When Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, the first things to show up were the wild beas...
Your body knows about schedules. It gets used to those times of day when it says, Feed me right now. I’m hungry, and those times of night when it says, Get me to bed. I’m exhausted. Your body will spe...