Thought for the Week: In divine hands
Michael Golby considers what silence and stillness is for
What is our silence and stillness for? ‘Downtime’ from the busy lives we lead, certainly. That’s therapeutic, I am sure, like meditation or a country walk. But Meeting for Worship is more than that. Our silence is the precondition for essential and serious business before God.
The Jewish Hasidic tradition sees an angel going before each human being crying out: ‘Make Way! Make Way!’ It is a graphic picture of ‘that of God’ in us as we find our way in the world.
I came to Quakers knowing I could not find my way under my own steam. For me, there has never been salvation at a stroke: only a continuous struggle to understand what love requires of me day by day in matters of consequence great and small.
Meeting for Worship sustains me because I know others are engaged in this same exercise of discernment. I understand that spoken ministry arises out of Friends’ personal search and need to remember this when the words of a Friend do not speak, immediately, to my condition.
Silent ministry, shared silence, always does uphold me. Then the gathered Meeting, when it occurs, demonstrates that Meeting for Worship is a collective endeavour.
The Meeting is not just a bunch of individuals pursuing their own interior journeys. The Meeting is not mine nor yours alone. It is in divine hands.
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