Noise. Clutter.

Yesterday in church, Pastor Steve paused for prayer before he delivered his sermon, and something he prayed resonated with me.

He was asking God to bless us as we searched his Word, "quieting ourselves" as we came to the text.

Quieting ourselves.

I don't know what it was exactly that struck me. Perhaps it was that so often I think of all the noise, all the clutter that's going on outside of me. There's work. There's my to-do list. There's all these... things... demanding my attention, my affections. And I try to quiet those, to push them away, to force them out... to sever all that's going on outside from what's going on inside my soul. And that's certainly a good thing. That's part of quieting ourselves, I'm sure.

But perhaps I need to expand my view just a bit, to include quieting myself.

I can hush all that's from without, but still let the clamoring from within go untended, even unmuffled.

Ugh. There's a nuance here that struck me Sunday as I sat there, that I'm missing now--unable to put words to it. But there was just something about "quieting ourselves" that held me. It's something more than what I'm doing. But I'd like to get there.