Blessed Quietness

“For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not.” (Isa 30:15 AV)

When one looks at what the LORD encourages, there has to be an amazement that anyone would turn it down.  Returning and rest.  Quietness and confidence.  Who wouldn’t what those things?  Who wouldn’t want to return to a place of contentment and joy?  Who wouldn’t want rest from internal toil and agitation?  Who wouldn’t want quietness of mind and heart?  Who wouldn’t want the absence of fear?  I certainly would!

I have realized the older one gets, the more one values the above conditions of life.  One of the things that I enjoy about hunting is not the success of taking game.  Rather, I enjoy the peace and quiet of nature.  The LORD has blessed me with many places that have brought such a peace.  Vast areas where little to no modern human contact can be seen or heard.  Sure, we bump into other hunters from time to time, but rarely are the sounds of cars, planes, plants, etc.  The last place that I hunted was a vast property in the rolling hills of Kentucky.  The only foreign noise was cattlemen driving their livestock.  Other than that, there were no man-made noises.  There is something about sitting atop a tree when the fog lifts and there isn’t another sight but the woods and wildlife.  One can empty one’s thoughts and anxieties into the vastness of God’s creation.  It is like letting out the flood gates of one’s soul into a land that can swallow it whole without ever really changing.

What the LORD offers is immensely more blessed.  He states above that if we return to His presence and rest in Him, we are saved from all the anxieties of life.  Our fears and troubles rest with Him.  We are saved from the cares of life if we simply learn to be quiet.  If we stop the pursuit of ungratifying selfish desires and learn to quiet the flesh, then we are saved from far more than we will ever realize.  In short, if we would simply learn to be content in the presence of God, living in obedience and faith to and in His word, our lives would be far better and more blessed than we could ever realize.  Paul tells his convert to study to be quiet.  That is great advice.