QUIETNESS AND CONFIDENCE

It has been a very clear instruction to me in this recent season to be quiet and listen. The plausible explanation for this came to me in the familiar James 1:19-20 text:
“Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters! Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. For human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness.” Quick to listen. Slow to speak. Slow to anger. One quick and two slows. Perhaps anger comes from too little listening and too much talking. Maybe they are a transactional triangle… one to the other to the other…

This was joined by another term I keep hearing:
‘In Quietness and Confidence,’ from Isaiah 30:15:
“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”

In this Quietness and Confidence comes two rewards: One is our own silence and the other as Rachel Naomi Ramen, M.D. and author wrote: “Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence.”

We have to have a silent quietness and confidence for ourselves before we can give it to others.

“But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but they didn’t see it. And they longed to hear what you hear, but they didn’t hear it.” Jesus