Keeping Quiet - A Lesson in Trusting

And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. Daniel 12:3-4

Being quiet - how quiet can you be on the Internet? On the Internet, the lack of words is the absence of space. In the ever-expanding universe of the World Wide web, that void is a bad thing. If you do not communicate at least every month with your audience, people start to think you are an Internet Introvert, and you will have stagnated your growth.

Growing up I was very shy, so talking was never a vice for me. I was, however, exposed in my childhood to many friends and family members with a ready verbose oratory on every subject imaginable. With my innate inclination and the knowledge that not everything said was listened to, I chose a life that was characterized by quiet and serenity, even if I might have had a thousand thoughts on any given subject myself.

As I got older, I discovered that some of my shyness was only fear, and I did learn to talk and communicate my thoughts to others. However, I am now learning, it is still best to think before you open your mouth, or type with your fingers. I am sure you can think of some present day situations of lives ruined by the misuse of the internet or by some other means of communication. What these people did not realize when they started to type(instead of think) was that they might not be really as mad as they thought they are at the person they are typing against. If most of us would write down our thoughts, put them aside for a day, and then read them again, most of our hate-letters would be thrown out.

Typing with your hands sets a new paradigm for the statement of "being the hands and feet of Jesus." Could we say that Jesus would communicate in the same way that we are to one of His followers? He did speak clearly and with force on how He felt about the Pharisees of the land, but at other times he showed that His care reached out them as well to show them what true religion really looked like.

It's not that in being quiet we cease from action. To be quiet infers lack of vocal use and a serenity of spirit, not lack of activity. To quiet our spirits is to wait on an Almighty God to act on our behalf, or to show us the right course of action. When we are quiet, we are releasing our control of the universe. We are putting our raging thoughts that invade our mind before the throne of Ultimate Truth. If He is not all powerful, or only partially powerful then the musing in our head or taking our own course of action might make sense. However, in the face of an all powerful God, our musings are senceless.

Waiting is an activity that can be done in the quiet. I saw recently a video blog where the speaker described "waiting" as meaning "twisting and braiding" in Hebrew. It is as if in waiting, you are taking the pieces and torn places of your life and twisting and braiding them together until they make a strong rope. The rope produced in waiting can hold us firm in the storms of life and keep us safe when we step off the cliffs we thought were solid ground.

It is not that planning is wrong. It's not whether we should count on plan A to work out, but it is that we should keep open hands to see whether A, B, C, or D are God's plans or not. Isaiah 55:9 says in the Old Testament, "Our thoughts are not God's thoughts, and as high as the earth is from the heavens are our thoughts from His".