Day By Day #39
Day by Day #39
MORNING/MIDDAY OFFICE
Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading: 1 John 4:7–8, 16b, 19–20
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. . . .
Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. . . .
We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.
Devotional
In his classic book, Spiritual Friendship, twelfth-century Cistercian monk Aelred of Rievaulx wrote that friendship, especially between believers, is a direct path to God, not a diversion from it. Paraphrasing a portion of the passage from 1 John, he wrote, “God is friendship, and he that abides in friendship abides in God.” Aelred’s seminal insight on God’s love has been examined by theologians for centuries. Why? Because when he substituted the word friendship for love, he highlighted a unique aspect of Jesus’ love—specifically, when he calls us friends (John 15:14).
As we move toward people to offer the love of Jesus, we too extend to them a true spiritual friendship distinct from that of the world. It is a friendship that reflects Jesus’ friendship to us. Here is how Aelred describes what it’s like to love as a true spiritual friend:
But what happiness, what security, what joy to have someone to whom you dare to speak on terms of equality as to another self; one to whom you need have no fear to confess your failings; one to whom you can unblushingly make known what progress you have made in the spiritual life; one to whom you can entrust all the secrets of your heart and before whom you can place all your plans!a
In other words, when the love of God is present in friendship, we cease to treat people as a means to an end. We lay aside any desire to “get something.” We affirm and appreciate their uniqueness. And we acknowledge our mutual brokenness and weakness. In a social media world where so much time is spent managing one’s “personal brand” and consistently appearing happy, this type of friendship is a rare gift.
Question to Consider
How might you be a true spiritual friend to someone in your life this week?
Prayer
Jesus, thank you for calling me a friend. It is almost too much to take in! Teach me to be a true friend—to you and to others. Grant me the desire and the power to listen with my whole heart, renouncing my own agenda, and appreciating the uniqueness of each individual I come in contact with today. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
MIDDAY/EVENING OFFICE
Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading: Psalm 46:1–6, 10a
God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts. . . .
He says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
Devotional
Silence and solitude are perhaps the most challenging and least practiced spiritual disciplines among Christians today. We live in a world of noise and distractions. Most of us fear silence. Yet when we look at the life of Jesus, we observe him regularly withdrawing to lonely places to be still and pray (Luke 5:16). We find biblical greats like Moses, Elijah, and John the Baptist spent decades alone with God before launching their public ministry. Where did they get such power to love when the world around them was falling apart? How were they able to love people who opposed them and were not responsive, and over so many years! We can be sure it was born and nurtured out of a deep relationship with God that included intentional times of listening and communing in stillness and silence.
Spending time in silence and stillness with God is a necessary and valuable counterweight to the thoughtless and excessive words we are routinely exposed to in the world. Stepping out of the noise of life through a daily practice of silence is actually a radical and prophetic act. It is also one we are in danger of losing. Author Gunilla Norris says it well:
Silence reveals. Silence heals. Silence is where God dwells. We yearn to be there. . . . [And yet] in our present culture, silence is an endangered species . . . an endangered fundamental. We need it badly. Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses, to our selves. It locates us. Without that return we can go so far away from our true natures that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves. . . .
The experience of silence is now so rare that we must cultivate it and treasure it.b
God offers us an inexhaustible well of living water in Jesus to love people over the long haul of our lives. However, in order to drink from that well, we must learn to integrate silence and stillness as foundational spiritual disciplines in our lives.
Question to Consider
How might you create additional space in your life for silence today?
Prayer
Lord, help me to be still and wait patiently for you in silence today. I know that you are always present with me and that you delight to spend time with me. Out of my silence and resting in your love, I ask that you enable me to see the people around me as you do—as unrepeatable and precious. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
a Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship, trans. Mary Eugenia Laker (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian, 1974), 66.
b Gunilla Norris, Inviting Silence: Universal Principles of Meditation (New York: Blue Bridge Books, 2004), 8, 31, 79.
From the book
