Silent Souls

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Psalm 62:1-2, 5-7 Truly my soul silently waits for God; From Him comes my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defense; I shall not be greatly moved. My soul, wait silently for God alone, For my expectation is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defense; I shall not be moved. In God is my salvation and my glory; The rock of my strength, And my refuge, is in God.

What it is speaking to me:

I have been in some crazy storms—and by storms, I mean literal ones. I remember driving down a country highway to visit my parents back when I was in college. I drove a 1991 Toyota Corolla then, which for some of my readers is a wonderful trip into '90s car nostalgia, and for others... it means nothing. The point is, it was a very small sedan that weighed next to nothing. I turned onto a two-lane highway and saw the largest storm cloud I had ever seen filling the sky. It sat directly over the road between me and my destination. It looked something like this:

I knew things were going to get crazy once I drove into that cloud. With your standard college-aged bravado, I went anyway. The moment I hit the edge of the storm, the sun vanished, rain hammered my windshield, and the wind shoved my tiny car out of my lane and into oncoming traffic. Luckily, I was the only one the road, so my sudden lane change wasn’t life-threatening. I had never felt a car be lifted and pushed like that, as if it weighed nothing. That was a real storm.

David seems to have written this psalm in the midst of a storm, though likely not a literal one. Whether it was personal or political, we won’t know this side of heaven—but it was a storm. Yet, the focus of the psalm isn’t the chaos; it is the silence of his soul. Twice, he repeats nearly the same phrase. I can’t say my soul was particularly silent during that drive, and I can recall several other personal storms where I didn’t manage "soul silence" very well either.

But there is power in a silent soul—a soul that is still before its Maker. Even amidst a storm, it remains steady. Silent. It doesn’t need to shout or desperately scream to make its pleas heard. It knows who holds it. That is the kind of soul David was describing. A soul that knows who sustains it and will weather whatever storm it finds itself in. That soul shall not be moved.

What is it saying to you?

How silent is your soul today? How do you remain still during the storms of life? What practices have helped you achieve that stillness in the past?

What are we going to do about it?

Hopefully, we won’t face a storm today. But silent souls don't have to wait for a crisis to practice stillness. In fact, it’s much easier on a clear day.

Whether your sky is stormy or clear, let’s practice being a soul that waits silently on the Lord today.