Our theme for this month: “Taking care of your soul.”
Our Bible verse for today: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10 (NIV)
Our thought for today: “The soul needs solitude and silence.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a Russian poet, writer, historian, and dissident in the old Soviet Union before, during, and after World War II. He spoke out against and wrote about the injustice of the Soviet system. He revealed the brutality of the forced labor camps and he exposed the hypocrisy of the communist leaders. For doing so he himself was sentenced to many years of isolation and hard labor in a remote Soviet prison camp.
Although those years of isolation, imprisonment, and forced solitude were brutal in so many ways, in Solzhenitsyn’s own opinion there was something positive and good that came from that time too. In the prolonged periods of isolated quiet he encountered God. Like so many before and after him, the isolation of prison became the holy ground upon which he met God. Like Peter in the Jerusalem jail, like John on the isle of Patmos, like Mandela during his decades of imprisonment, in that quiet solitude Solzhenitsyn met God and he learned some profound lessons about the value and importance of a healthy soul. He wrote:
“Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.” He also wrote:
“The meaning of earthly existence is not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prosperity, but in the development of the soul.”
The lesson here is not that we all need some time in prison so we can have extended periods of quiet and reflection (although that might be the only way some of us would get it!), but instead it illustrates the importance for each of us to be intentional about carving out quiet time to just sit and be with God. That’s what God was saying in Psalm 46:10. He was telling us to calm down, sit down, quiet down, and just be with Him. “Just be still Jim, just stop all the activity, all the noise, all the doing, and know that I am God.”
One of my favorite kinds of prayer is to simply sit quietly before God. No praying or talking of any kind, no reading, no thinking – just being. It’s like when a young child crawls up into your lap, lays their head on your chest, and just sits with you. There’s nothing going on except enjoying each others presence. The relationship between you is growing deeper and being vastly enriched simply by being together. That’s what Psalm 46:10 describes and that’s what God longs for from His children.
Hopefully God will never find it necessary to put you or me in solitary confinement in order to get us to slow down and just spend time with Him. Although some of us we really don’t give Him any other option. Some of us allow ourselves to be so busy, and we make so many excuses for why we don’t have time to just sit quietly with God, that a little time in a Soviet gulag or on a deserted island like Patmos might do us some good.
The truth here is that the soul needs periods of silence and solitude. Why not carve out a little of that for yourself today?
God Bless,
Oak Hill Baptist Church 