Twenty years ago, I offered an invitation to a retreat called A Day Away for Prayer. It read:

In a noisy world, we need to hear the voice of God.
In a distracted world, we need to hear the cries of our own hearts.
In an anxious world, we need rest of body and soul.
In an angry and fearful world, we need the peace of God.
In a lost world, we need clarity, courage, and great love.
And Jesus says to us in Mark 6:31, “Come away to a quiet place and rest.”

The invitation stands.
You are invited…
To listen to your own life.
To lift your prayers to your maker.
To better know the living Christ.
To believe that God’s Word is for you.
To rest in the loving presence of God.

I offered that retreat day because of what happened to me at a pivotal junction when life was very unsettled. Each day, I sat with the Lord. I read some scripture and then listened for a long time in stillness and silence. I was listening partly to my troubled heart and lifting my concerns to God. I was listening to hear anything God might say to me.

The simple practices of solitude, stillness, and silence only ask you to pause, stop for a time to breathe, settle for a moment, and rest. You need no money, technology, special setting, or supplies other than perhaps your Bible. The Lord himself invites us to this. We all love the words from Psalm 46:10: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Another version reads, “Pause a while.…”
In other words, take a moment. Stop what you are doing. Breathe slowly. Let your body become still, and your thoughts slow. Remember your maker. Rest in his love, remembering you are a deeply loved and thoroughly forgiven son or daughter of the most high God.

Yet this is not simple for us. Long ago, someone told me that if I sat silent and still for several minutes, the first visitor to show up would be fear. Our hearts are trained to be restless, and our minds to be anxious. It is a radical act to stop, pause, and learn to listen to the Lord and our own deep needs and hopes. Counselor Wayne Muller described this: “Because we do not rest, we lose our way.… Poisoned by the hypnotic belief that good things come only through unceasing determination and tireless effort, we can never truly rest” (Invitation to Solitude and Silence).

God himself invites you. “This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength’” (Isaiah 30:15).

How do we begin? Here is how one person, A. W. Tozer, began: “Lord, teach me to listen. The times are noisy, and my ears are weary…. Let me hear you speaking in my heart” (The Pursuit of God).

And you can join me in a prayer I wrote long ago.

Please Lord,
will you quiet my anxious thoughts,
silence my accusing thoughts,
protect my growing trust in You,
and let me rest in Your presence.
My ears are filled with the noise of the world.
Please let me hear you; speak to me in your Word.
Please help me to pray, for in prayer,
I am most truly who I am.
And I am yours.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.

by Pastor June Barrow