I checked the clock and felt my pulse quicken. In three more minutes, my Zoom meeting would start, likely without me, since my current call continued without a sign of conclusion. I threw my worn headset around my neck and switched the call over from speakerphone, trying not to miss anything important they said between the dings of incoming messages. My responses arrived with an unwanted, but necessary, rushed tone as I cleared stacks of papers off my desk with one hand and juggled my laptop with the other, landing it safely on the stand right before it fell to the hardwood floor. Thank goodness I didn’t drop it . . . again.
I plopped in my chair with a silent sigh and logged on, watching the screen load email after email that I did not have time to check. I brushed my hair out of my eyes, sat up straight, and used the Zoom preview screen to check for anything unpresentable as I ended the phone call. I looked tired. I was tired.
It wasn’t just that I was tired from being busy. I was worn out from all the noise of my day. My soul and my mind needed quiet.
I thought back to a verse a friend shared with me the day before as we chatted about feeling overwhelmed. The constant barrage of information that flowed through constant emails, texts, calls, and social media notifications felt suffocating when combined with the everyday worries of life, like car repairs and family illnesses. We sought solutions that allowed us to rise above the noise and discern what was important within all that competed for our time and attention. Our only answers thus far had been to sneak quick moments of quiet that would allow us to carry on exhausted.
As I watched faces appear across the screen, the words “He will be quiet in His love” repeated in my head again and again. I wanted to know what that meant.
Later that night, my study of the verse led me down an interesting and unexpected road. As I dove into commentary and concordance, I discovered most translations did not share the same wording. Some used “be quiet” and some used “renewal” and others used “rest.” But a distinct revelation glittered and shined before me as I realized each iteration presented the main point as a verb.
I expected a conversation about quiet to be a noun. For me right now, quiet was some place I visited, not something I did. The word study showed this was not the same phrasing as God used in “Be still and know.” This was action. Action that held meanings like plowed, engraved, renewed, and more. My current frantic and stolen moments of quiet included little healing action and more resignation and defeat. But God wanted to give me a different kind of quiet. He didn’t want to just take away. He wanted actively to give.
He did not want to only offer me the absence of noise, but the replacement of the noise with God’s love. Not an escape, but a joyful restoration. He wanted to move in the silence, gaining my full and undivided attention, healing me with His love from the inside out. In a world that had become inundated with information and communication that felt inescapable, a restoration was welcomed.
That was a message I craved before I could define it. One that I needed to make room for in my life, no matter how busy the schedule. Something greater than simply quiet. Peace and quiet.
That message was one I had time to receive.
