O Lord My God, Quiet My Soul!

 

THU EP Reflection 100820 (Ps 131; Acts 24: 1-23; Luke 7:36-50)

Ps 131 contains some of those words that invite stability in our lives. It’s one of those verses we need to put on our fridge for a constant reminder to bring our focus back to God. “But I have stilled and quieted my soul.” Psalm 131:2. How do we go about that, when we have a myriad of preoccupations in life? Even when we try to enjoy peace and quietness, often enough our minds wonder a bit. For extroverts, silence and quietness seem like forever, whereas introverts are energized and inspired in quietness. The point of the Psalmist is not that some of us are great at silence and others are not, his point is that we all need to quiet our souls; we need to learn to rest our hearts, and hopefully listen in the process. Wendy Pope wrote in an article: “In silence and stillness, I sensed God's direction for my day, peace for my circumstances and the soul-rest I needed.” I wish we could say at the end of a long day that my soul is now quieted within me. I think this should be our goal because we deal with so much in life that it is really difficult to quiet our hearts and minds in silence.

In my earlier reflection, I spoke about the way early Church believers seemed quiet, joyful and patient even in the most horrendous situations which reveals a distinctive quality of people whose lives have been completely altered by Jesus Christ their savior. I want to reflect on St Paul’s challenges in the book of Acts. An official charge was presented by the high Priest Ananias and the elders accusing Paul for being an agitator. How different was this from what happened to Jesus our Lord? Think, we have the formal temple leadership still in opposition to a follower of Jesus, whom people called at the time, people of the way. Nothing had changed. They were persecuting them like they did with Jesus.

In the midst of such highly distressing circumstance, St Paul’s response was calm, reasonable and very respectful. Is this calm, what the Bible call a quieted soul? One can discover the secret behind such calm in Paul’s response Acts 24: 16: “Therefore I do my best always to have a clear conscience towards God and all people.”

What did Paul mean there? Could he be hinting that he had a deep peace with God because of God’s call on his life and that because of God’s grace and love, he was trying his best to do the will of God? So much to unpack there, but it is possible that we can lose our peace because in our confrontation with real life, we get to be shaken, and we act out, and often we participate in what is wrong in impulsive response which leads us to the lack God’s peace. I should pray most often: “O Lord My God, Quiet my soul”

There is another psalm that asks: “O My Soul why are you disquieted within me? (Ps. 42: 5)” I have the impression that this experience is so common to us when things are really not going well, and we feel a little depressed about it, and I think Ps 131 is encouraging us to have those regular breaks for the health of your heart and soul; it encourages us to seek God in silence, to make sure our hearts and soul put some breaks on, and sit in silence for a while. Serenity is a disposition that is defined as the state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled. Followers of Jesus Christ simply inherit such state because of the hope they have in Christ. The hope that their sins are forgiven, and that now they are children of the Most-High God.

Our Gospel lesson today, showed us that when we are aware of how much we were forgiven, then we love God the most, which is more than Jesus could say for the Pharisees and Elders. His example of the forgiven sinful woman, tells us that everyone who humbly come before the Lord for forgiveness, will be forgiven, but if we claim we are righteous and have nothing to be sorry for, then we don’t need God’s forgiveness. Jesus is declaring publicly that He has the power to forgive sins. I think this is the greatest part of our journey towards serenity: you have submitted your life to the leadership of Jesus Christ, so the troubles of this world, as well as our responses to it, are all under Jesus. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1). Christian believers have a hope unlike any other. Cling to it for dear life!

Amen.