It was a great idea... one that if you used it you'd feel like one of those moms that are doing all the right things...
Well getting down to it, it was a box with cards- each with creative letters of the alphabet and each letter starts a scripture. Its been helpful really with little ones who are all about the alphabet, and in my awesome parenting, we'd all learn scriptures. Except, lets just say half the time, I forget to change the letter. We just got to Q, and I was curious as to what scripture starts with a Q (no spoiler alerts if you know X or Z... the anticipation is real and there are no peaksies). Anywho, the scripture is truncated Isaiah 30:15 "quietness and trust is your strength".
I'm not going to lie... I read it and was like... wah wah.... what does that even mean?
It actually was in my own reading a couple weeks later that I came back across it.... here's it a little more fully...
It actually was in my own reading a couple weeks later that I came back across it.... here's it a little more fully...
In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.
It caught my attention.
The following women's devotional added:
A woman's ego often pushes her into a whirlwind life of busyness, too. If you are capable, and if the ladies adore you and heap compliments on your pretty head every time you teach the class or preside at the circle meeting, just be wary. It is easy to mistake the voice of flattery for the voice of God. Especially if you've been busy for so long, there hasn't been a really quiet time to hear God speak.
The voice of God is always speaking to us, and always trying to get our attention. But his voice is a "still, small voice," and we must at least slow down in order to listen.
Bam. Like Emeril kinda BAM!
We're busy serving the poor...
BAM!
We're finding ways to build our community...
BAM!
We're keeping up with the latest trends in being women, moms, in business, etc....
BAM, BAM, BAM!
That Emeril.... he's kinda noisy!
We have great intentions, but how many of us have succumbed to approval, applause, and the voices that aren't so still or small.
And before we know it... or maybe we don't because its so busy, loud and noisy, we have none of it, like the scripture reads.
They may be great things we are doing, but as we're reminded...
In repentance and rest is our salvation, in quietness and trust is our strength...
Be still my soul!
It may be my attention to abiding that draws my eyes to the nature of active waiting these scriptures paint.
Repentance... an about face...
Rest..."freedom from activity or labor"...
Quietness.... the absence of noise... the stillness that heightens the senses...
Trust...assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone... namely God.
So why doesn't this match most of our lives? Is it realistic to even think in today's society and culture that we have a fighting chance? Is this just abandoning life?
Maybe.
I also think this is the stillness that exists inside... no matter how busy my job or motherhood requires me to be, am I active to repent? Am I finding my soul's rest in the quietness I create so that the still small voice of the One I trust is able to come or even carry me through?
Even in it all, we are commissioned to repent and rest in him... it is our own salvation. We have the strength, because we trust in the quietness its His voice that guides us through.
And in true Sesame Street fashion, because well, little bit loves Elmo...
Today's blog brought to you by.... The letter Q!
The saying goes "Still waters run deep." But, my daughter you are not still waters and you still run deep. Thank you for your post. It touched my life this morning!
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