12. Quieting

[Irmela]

Day 12 Meditation (Psalm 131).

Why does demanding answers from God lead to stress?

How have unexplained events in your life made you angry?

How do you actually go about calming and quieting your soul?

What does it mean to "hope in the Lord"?

Demanding something is stressful in itself.  Demanding from God should really not happen.  Demanding is different to pleading and asking.  Demanding something is like what a brat would do.  After a demand generally comes a temper-tantrum and then silent-tantrum.  For certain no please or 'if at all possible'. 

Not too sure if angry is the right thing that happened.  Sooner confused and uncertain.  After that determined to make the best of the situation, to prove that I can cope in it.  And hope against hope that things will change.  Until it was evident that it wouldn't.  Then I gave in to tears and despair. 

Talking the situation over with the Lord sure brought peace and quietness to my heart then and still does today.  

To 'hope in the Lord" means trusting Him to take control of and change a hopeless situation into a more positive one.  

[Krissi]

This is the age of Wikipedia. When I want to know something, I find my cellphone or sit before my desktop and look it up – instant information! But in the Christian life, this rarely works. Though I turn to God for answers, seeking diligently, He generally responds with silence. I call it “His divine pause.” That interminable pause.

As the years have passed without answers or guidance, that pause has become the “new normal.” I have adjusted to His silence rather than expect answers. This is not humility – it’s failure. It’s a failure to pray correctly, or to get rid of the sins/encumbrances that prevent me from reaching Him. It is a failure to connect with God, to be the daughter He wants to talk to. My prayers are like arrows shot into the sky that neither fall back to earth nor reach their target. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

When the psalmist says he doesn’t occupy himself with thoughts that are too great or marvelous, he may be admitting that though he had tried to find answers he had failed, so stopped asking. When he doesn’t ask, he can he be calm and quiet in his soul. This is resignation more than calmness. Perhaps submission. It’s a quiet wrestling in prayer so it is not hopelessness. When a person is hopeless, he or she no longer wrestles.

I don’t expect Him to reach down to me, as in the iconic fresco by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel in which God’s finger touches Adam’s. That painting is called “Creation” not “Communication.” God’s touch creates.

But creation is also a “speech act.” It’s God speaking out – His words, His logos. God spoke the universe into existence. He did it with words. Words = touch. Amazingly, Adam had a part in that scene, when he reached toward God … he stretched out his arm as if to touch God so ever lightly, like the bleeding woman who crawled to Jesus to touch his cloak. His touch included her answer.

God’s silence has been the biggest challenge in my Christian life. It has forced me to think more deeply and read more widely, to look at circumstances for answers, to be observant and … very, very quiet. I wonder, now, if He has answered my prayers in touch, in the circumstances that crowd my life and force it down a certain path. If so, maybe touch is His answer.