A Calm You Can Choose
Your Nightly Prayer for Dec. 2, 2024
by Shawn McEvoy
TONIGHT’S SCRIPTURE
Surely I have composed and quieted my soul… (Psalm 131:2, NAS)
SOMETHING TO PONDER
One of my favorite things about the Psalms is just how kind they are to us in times of need. If you’ve ever gone through a day with an overdose of cruelty or an abundance of uncaring faces, you can always open up this book and find the Spirit speaking multi-layered truth to you. In this case, God, through the psalmist David, wants you to know: YOU have what it takes to find a moment of quiet composition. What’s more, here’s a metaphor to help you picture it: a weaned child sleeping peacefully on its mother’s chest. Now this child didn’t necessarily find it easy to have gone through the weaning process – there were things it did not understand, there were tears and frustrations. But having come to the other side, oh my goodness there is blessed rest.
And it doesn’t stop there. We can flip over to Psalm 62 to learn how “My soul waits in silence for God only” (v. 1). Or that in Psalm 34 we are encouraged to, “Seek peace, and pursue it” (v. 14). In each of these instances, the active onus is on us, and the suggestion is that we are more than able to do these things. Maybe it’s through remembering a day in a beautiful outdoor location far away from any traffic when everything was supremely silent. Maybe a friend or counselor has given you mechanisms for deep breathing, or grounding yourself by what your senses can detect in an imagined locale. Or maybe it’s enough for you to picture how you’ve already survived the day’s hardest lessons, and now, child, lean in upon the one who knows and loves you.
However you get there, you’ll get there. Maybe it won’t be tonight. But God is unfailingly kind and has given you all you need to know and trust him, as the Psalms bear witness.
YOUR NIGHTLY PRAYER
Holy Lord, sometimes stillness can be so hard to find. My lists are long, and my rest is fitful. Anxieties make it feel as if everything is happening at once. But you assure me I have the ability to turn off the distractions and find the quiet moments, and in their silence wait for you alone. And that having gone through the whirlwind is what gives me access to the deep and cleansing breaths of the Spirit in the lulls. Make me into an instrument of your peace, Father, in my own life and the lives of others. In Jesus’ name, amen.
THREE THINGS TO MEDITATE UPON
1. One good friend from your life, past or present, with whom silence is/was always comfortable
2. A place you’ve visited in your travels that was especially peaceful – what was it that made it that way?
3. Infants you have held, both the screamy, squirmy ones and the quiet, contented ones. Were those sometimes the same babies?
Image credit: Unsplash/Ivan Mani
Shawn McEvoy is the Executive Director of Content for Salem Web Network, where he has served to create Kingdom-blessing media since 2005. He actually gets to manage the teams that produce the good stuff on Crosswalk.com, Christianity.com, BibleStudyTools.com, iBelieve.com and GodTube.com. Shawn is also the former co-host of Crosswalk's Video Movie Reviews and the Inside the Editors' Room podcast.
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