Quietness

...and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire a still small voice. --1 Kings 19:12

"The accent in the Church today," says Leonard Ravenhill, the English evangelist, "is not on devotion, but on commotion." Religious extroversion has been carried to such an extreme in evangelical circles that hardly anyone has the desire, to say nothing of the courage, to question the soundness of it. Externalism has taken over. God now speaks by the wind and the earthquake only; the still small voice can be heard no more. The whole religious machine has become a noisemaker. The adolescent taste which loves the loud horn and the thundering exhaust has gotten into the activities of modern Christians. The old question, "What is the chief end of man?" is now answered, "To dash about the world and add to the din thereof."
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I have been guilty of adding to such a mindset in the church. Busy, busy busy! As Chuck Swindoll once observed, "We more resemble a stampeding herd of cattle than sheep by still waters."

It is taking a long time, but the Lord is teaching me -- in small doses -- the value of quietness. This is definitely a discipline that I want to make a part of my spiritual practice. I've tasted enough to know I want more.