November 14

Quiet times with God

“And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat” (Mark 6:31).
“And Jesus said, Make the men sit down” (John 6:10).
“And he took them, and went aside privately into a desert place” (Luke 9:10).

How good the heart’s still chamber thus to close
On all but God alone—
There in the sweetness of His love repose,
His love unknown!
All else for ever lost—forgotten all
That else can be;
In rapture undisturbed, O Lord, to fall
And worship Thee.
—Gerhardt Tersteegen

I want you to notice, with regard to this blessedness of a pause in the outflowing energy of life, that it applies not merely to what we call our secular occupations, but to our sacred and religious ones as well. Indeed it often seems as if there were a sense in which it might be said that nothing so tended to keep God out of our lives as work for God done in a wrong and superficial spirit. . . . How religious work tries to push out religious thought and to kill the soul’s receptivity. The more earnestly you are at work for Jesus, the more you need time when what you are doing for Him passes totally out of your mind, and the only thing worth thinking of seems to be what He is doing for you.
—Phillips Brooks.

Allured into the desert,
With God alone apart,
There spirit meeteth spirit,
There speaketh heart to heart.
Far, far on that untrodden shore,
God’s secret place I find,
Alone I pass the golden door,
The dearest left behind.
—Gerhardt Tersteegen.

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