We have dear, dear friends doing amazing work planting life in difficult places. We know countless people around the world who are responsible for the lives of multitudes of children in group settings. These are not places known for their quiet, in fact, it’s probably the opposite. Television and music blare in the streets, dining halls are filled with the sounds of children, voices are often way loud and very disruptive, controlled chaos reigns most days.

Where does quiet fit in these places? Is it even possible? Should we even try?

I think we can find room for quiet. I do think it is possible, and I definitely believe we should try. So where to begin?

Let me toss a few thoughts out there, not fully developed, but thoughts nonetheless.

1. We need to be people who know and honor quiet if we ever want to cultivate spaces and times for it. If we can’t find it, the children never will. In the years when I taught school, I read aloud to my children each and every day after lunch. We turned off the lights, they set their heads on their desks, and just listened to great stories. It became part of our culture. As the leader of the community, I set the time aside for it, and slowly it came to be for most of my children, one of their favorite times in the day.

2. We need to remember that quiet is something you learn. For many children it is a foreign language. It has zero value. So if we want it to gain ground, we have to cultivate it. We don’t demand it or force it. We plant the seeds and wait for it to grow.

3. It will take time to grow. It will take discipline and daily routine. It often works best in smaller groups, quietly baking in the kitchen, or listening to a book on tape while coloring.

4. It needs to be watered at the right time – after a game of touch football, in the early mornings on a walk, as the sun is setting. Quiet is very sensitive, it prefers certain times of day, specific environments. Again, it is not something you force. If you believe in it, then the children around you will come to trust in its worth. Speak to it. Point it out to children. Take a listening walk. Read in a quiet voice. Don’t fill every empty space with chatter.

5. Trust in its worth. I think that’s critically important. Children are nurtured and cared for in the whole of the day, all the weaving in and out and in and out. Quiet is like that, it balances activity. It holds us when we’re weary.

More than anything else, let’s not stop trying to create quiet spaces for children. I do believe they need quiet, and so do we.

Ah yes, another great Bible class yesterday. And here came our recurring theme, talents and gifts and whether or not we are investing them in the Kingdom or gathering dirt under our fingernails as day after day we bury our gifts in the ground.

What work has God given you to do? What spiritual gifts has He given you? Do you know? Have you discovered your purpose in life? Do you know what to look for? Do you know how to find it? When you have discovered your gifts and you begin to use them for His purpose, you will find that God does not give a spirit of fear but of power and love and a sound mind. That is Paul’s first word to Timothy about how to guard the truth.

You might ask, “How does that work?” How can using my spiritual gifts help to guard the truth? It’s simple: When you exercise your spiritual gifts, you literally unleash the truth and set it free to work in the world. The truth is not some fragile, brittle thing; it is powerful, robust, vigorous, active. And the most effective way to guard God’s truth is to unleash it in the world.

Charles Spurgeon was exactly right when he said, “Truth is like a lion. Whoever heard of defending a lion? Turn it loose and it will defend itself.”

Ray Stedman, Adventuring through the Bible

I think children need more quiet than we think they do. We turn on televisions and iPads to entertain, but sometimes the best entertainment is no entertainment. I’ve enjoyed some very quiet mornings with my youngest son in recent days, and I will admit, these recent mornings have been absolutely delightful. A Bible lesson, then history, some time working with words and numbers, then long hours of reading on the couches – he on his, me on mine – ah yes, reading has sometimes lulled into napping, but that has been delightful as well.

In busy families and orphanages and ministry projects, it’s not easy to cultivate room for quiet. But I think it can be done, and I fear it’s more important than we would like to admit.

Found this quote from Mother Teresa in a book that I’m reviewing. She reminds us that “We need to find God, and God cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence…..We need silence to be able to touch souls.” Mother Teresa as quoted in Pilgrimage of a Soul by Phileena Heuertz

Sometimes we fill our days with frenetic energy, too many activities for the children, too much go go go…..sometimes we need to be bored. We need to take a walk with nowhere to go, we need to sit and listen to the birds, we need to draw or paint or read quietly, we need to silently build the best Lego creation ever. Don’t be afraid of nurturing quiet with children, it does touch their souls.

I love Bible class with my youngest son. We’ve been studying a book this year that has methodically opened up every single book of the Bible – teaching us and guiding us to the marvelous Message right at our fingertips. I have learned many many things that I previously did not know, and for that I am very grateful.

So today we read about Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonions, it speaks to the Day of the Lord and the coming end of this world. It is coming, can you sense it? The labor pains are increasing, the world feels the weight of evil. Even in “safe places” people no longer feel “safe”. People are closing their doors, wondering about their neighbors, avoiding public places. I thought this quote from our study was particularly interesting.

But Paul says that something is restraining the power of lawlessness, preventing total anarchy. Jesus has made it clear what that restraining force is: “You are the salt of the earth,” He said. “You are the light of the world”. Salt prevents corruption from spreading. Light dispels darkness. So it is the presence of God’s people on earth that restrains the secret power of lawlessness and evil – but before we become proud, we should understand this: It is not we who hold back the darkness, but the Spirit of God living in us, acting through us. So we must make sure that the Holy Spirit has all there is of us so that He can be fully present in the world, guarding against corruption, illuminating the dark corners of the world. Ray Stedman, Adventuring through the Bible

Open your front door, greet your neighbors, speak and work and live in the public places.

Work, watch, wait and hope.

Do not be afraid, the Kingdom comes.

A year ago I asked this question, yesterday afternoon I asked this question, I keep on asking this question. One of my friends that I know only through his books sent me this encouragement…..Notwithstanding the number of words in the air, whether or not I reached the end of the number of words that I am called to write about the things I have been given to write about is the real question for a writer.….He is a man who thinks deeply about these things, so his counsel is a worthy nudge.

And to his question about whether or not I have finished writing about what I’ve been asked to write about, I’m afraid the answer is no. Not until I’ve written my way through this stack of notebooks and papers on this desk will I be done. Problem is that almost daily those notebooks receive another thought, but for now, there are words and thoughts and inklings that must be released.

Onward we go.

I’m a prairie girl at heart. Much of my childhood was spent leaving the big city and heading toward the country. The early morning hours of the drives were spent transitioning out of the urban mayhem and into the dirt – fields of corn and beans, scattered farmsteads, an occasional tree. And then the car would wake to life, “We’re almost to the river! Wake up! Wake up! You don’t want to miss it.” And there it was! Deep, wide, rambling. We zoomed over the bridge and almost always someone talked about the pioneers crossing that water with their wagons and cattle and horses.

It’s still quite amazing to think of those rickety old wagons and the dreams those wheels spun as they went round and round and round. They saw something out there on the horizon and they walked toward it. Many wanted to feel the dirt between their toes of land they could own. Others heard whispers of gold and fortune. Some just followed the beaten path.

Along the trails there were junctions and crossings and forks in the road. It didn’t take long for some to set up shop in the borderlands. Need supplies? A new pair of oxen? A tooth pulled? A wheel fixed? Commerce always happens where trails meet and journeys touch. But beyond the barters and exchanges, there were conversations – late night fires, early morning walks. There were those who had gone way ahead and come back – trappers and hunters and scouts. Their feet knew the trails, their eyes had seen the landmarks, their experiences brought shape and texture to the unknown.

I’m convinced that God often works in similar ways. He flings wide the seed and watches to see where it will go. He shapes expansions and movements along paths and trails. He sends out scouts and adventurers early so they can return to testify around the fires late at night. When He begins to move, there is no stopping Him. He springs up here and there and His pace is relentless.

In recent years the cause of the orphan has risen in prominence. We have Orphan Sundays, we read articles in the news, we are more aware of domestic and international adoptions. New books are on our shelves, conferences are popping up here and there, the momentum is hard to miss.

It’s exciting to see, but let’s take care as we walk in and out of shops, as we “interview” in a sense our trail guides, let’s be listeners. Let’s make new mistakes. Let’s take care to follow God as He blazes the trail. This is His work, He’s going somewhere new, and we will only find success if we pay attention to His ways.

He’s planting trees in the wilderness, bringing forth ancient disciplines.

Enjoy the bustle and activity of the launch point, but be very careful as well.

I’m hoping to write on this more in the coming days, but wanted to post this poem that I found today.

My uncle passed away on the 2nd of February, so grateful for his life.

Let Go, Return

This is the need, the deep necessity of every life:
To scatter wide seed in many fields,
But build one barn.

This is our blunder, to have built
Gilt shacks for every seed,
And followed our sowing on fast anxious feet,
Desiring to grind the farmost grain.

Let go. Let go. Return
Heighten and straighten the barn’s first beam.
Give shape and form. Discover the rat, the splintered stair.
Throw out the dry, gray corn.

Then may it be said of you:
Behold, he had done one thing well,
And he knows whereof he speaks, and he means what he has said,
And we may trust him.
This is sufficient for a life.

-Josephine W. Johnson

I came upon this quote over coffee this morning and it was a jolt. So was the coffee, but that’s to be expected.

A sense of hurry in pastoral work disqualifies one for the work of conversation and prayer that develops relationships that meet personal needs. There are heavy demands put upon pastoral work, true; there is difficult work to be engaged in, yes. But the pastor must not be “busy.” Busyness is an illness of spirit, a rush from one thing to another because there is no ballast of vocational integrity and no confidence in the primacy of grace. Eugene Peterson, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work

As readers of this blog know, every once in a while we look up a word in the dictionary. The above quote was part of a larger discussion on leisure and lingering, and it made me pause. Who lingers these days? More often than not, it’s the ones at the start of the life and the ones at the end. The sunrises and the sunsets. Once the sun is out and bright and shining, we forget about it. But a gradual dawning or a lingering sunset brings a pause. Or should bring a pause.

To linger means to remain in one place longer than is usual or expected. It also means to remain alive; to continue or persist, although gradually dying, ceasing, disappearing.

Let’s bring back lingering, why ever not?

Let’s not be afraid of lingering. Whether it’s the child absorbed at play or a loved one slowly leaving us, let’s hold the lingering.

We’re in the midst of launching a new year, the year 2013. Our desks are accumulating projects, our bodies are trying to shed pounds, our calendars are filled with pencil marked possibilities, our family table gathers the group at night to exchange stories, ask questions and critique the latest new recipe. We are busy. Oh we are busy, we’re all busy. We talk about it so much that the chatter adds to the weight. This list, that topic, every task with a few extra complications.

But there are moments. Divine moments. Let’s stop and pay attention moments when we realize that we have all the time we need. Time is not ours, it is given to us, it is received by us. Time is promised to be short and fleeting. You can miss it. You will miss it, most of it. You can spend your whole life chasing it and come up empty. Or you can let it catch you and hold you and teach you.

Time is holding my family right now. One of my uncles, one of our family treasures, has stepped into the thin place between this world and the next. A hush has fallen over all of us, and we wait, and time feels different today.

Bustling my way through a variety of emails and articles and links, I happened upon two or five or ten in a row that we’re all about women and vulnerable children. They were mass appeals without names or faces, and so they fly by, they occupy so little of my time, of yours.

But then I was called into a prayer meeting. Yes, a prayer meeting. And as people gathered from around the office,  I realized what was happening. We were saying goodbye to a little girl who is leaving one family and being placed into a different family. And in a sharp moment, we were in a different time. We were in sacred time, the holiness of the ground on which we were walking was so radiant, our eyes filled with tears . So it isn’t about solutions for the masses, factory mentalities don’t work here. This is about one particular girl and her individual story, and the three women – a mother and two daughters – who have opened their home again and again and again to face after face after face. Particular faces. Unique stories.

This is about time rising up and blessing a child, marking her journey forever.

Time. We have all we need.