Spend some not-so-quiet time with these:
Christian Spirituality > Spiritual Disciplines, Practices, and Ideas > Quiet Time
A practice that's most commonly associated with recent spiritual awakenings is that of seeking times of silence in our lives. It's hard to hear the Spirit with all the noise around us. So, many Christians have learned to take some small part of each day and set it aside for silence. This means shutting off the beeper, turning off the TV and radio, taking the phone off the hook, and closing the door. Or, it means walking off to the beach or garden or mountain, as Jesus Himself did, and not doing anything but leaving yourself open to the Lord.
This time set aside for silence during the day is often called 'quiet time'. It's usually done first thing in the morning, but some people have been able to use their train or bus ride to work for it, or perhaps they slip off to a neglected cubbyhole of their workplace during coffee break or lunch. (I myself can't do that; I'm still too easily distracted.) Quiet time, as with other devotional activities, can help give some divine rhythm to the daily routine.
That takes care of outside noise. But what about the inner noise? Our own mind is constantly thinking about what to do, what's going to happen, what others are thinking, and what we aspire to or lust after. That sort of stuff is also noise, at least to our spirit. To turn that off, the ancients did something very simple: they breathed. That is, they breathed through their nose, slowly, deeply, using their diaphragm, focusing their mind on the act of breathing. The body reacts to this sort of breathing by relaxing; muscle tension fades away, and blood pressure drops. The mind reacts, too. As your body relaxes, your thoughts focus down on the one bodily action you can't shut off. This leaves more of your mind free to hear God whispering to you.
Many Christians who use quiet time lead into it with a certain kind of noise: praise or intercessory prayer (prayer that asks for our needs and for the needs of others). Most of us find it easier to be quiet once we take off the weight of our burdens for those we love and lay them before God. But others, especially those of a 'contemplative' approach, find that to be too 'noisy'. The first thing they do is listen to God in silence, and then lead out of it with intercessions. Whatever order you find useful, trust that God will receive your prayers and will speak to you in the silence.
Quiet time is more than just a daily appointment with God.
It's more like a visit with your closest friend. It's
especially important for those of us who've made our lives in
such a way that we'd make God get an appointment to speak to
us. Good relationships need the time; they can't live as just
another item on the agenda, yet they are lost if time isn't
specifically set aside for them.
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If quiet time is a daily spiritual need, then there may be times when a longer stretch of solitude may be needed. For that, there is the 'retreat'. This is done by going to a specific place away from where you live and work, away from hobbies and duties, families and habits, media and pressures. It can be done totally alone, or with just a spiritual director or sponsor, or with a small group of people who have a common purpose or bond. It works because it thoroughly separates you from life as you know it for more than just a few minutes a day. This gives you a chance to step outside of your entire way of life for a little while and see it from a different angle. The retreat time can help you get back in touch with parts of yourself that had been bypassed in daily life for the sake of efficiency or to avoid the pain. It can be a time of extended discussion with God, of throwing forth thoughts and feelings, working things out, being still and waiting on the Lord. A retreat may well refresh you with quiet rest, but if that's all the 'retreat' is, then it's just another vacation. The spiritual retreat is time spent with God.
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy", goes one of the Ten Commandments. The sabbath is one day every week, a time set aside for not working, but resting, and for attending to one's faith in God. In our daily living in this world, we can get tricked into measuring our own value and those around us by what we accomplish, either in quality or quantity. But neither quality nor quantity are the measure of a person. We are measured by a different stick, the one a loving God uses for God's children. Sabbath is not a time for running away, but for regaining perspective, and taking the time for worship of the One on whom our value depends, and being with others who are doing the same thing.
But how does one keep a Sabbath? Some hints :
The Sabbath was not meant for running away. Human needs
still happen around us on the Sabbath. God may have rested in
creating the world, but the world does not rest. (Perhaps that
might explain the law of entropy (in physics), in which all
things tend toward inertia or inactivity: the world's merely
getting tired from having no rest.) Some Pharisees were
watching Jesus closely to see whether Jesus would heal a leper
on the Sabbath. He did, of course. When confronted with the
man's need, He had to act somehow. It would have been unGodly
not to heal the man. Those Pharisees who were there at
the scene thought otherwise, even though some teachers in their
own part of the Jewish tradition held that there was no day
that was wrong for doing good if the opportunity presented
itself. They showed a loss of perspective and a hardness of
heart. Let us be as Jesus in practicing the Sabbath, not as those
Pharisees found in Mark 3.
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| ver.: 16 June 2010 Quiet Time with God. Copyright © Robert Longman Jr. |