AN EMPTY ROOM IS SILENT. A room where people are not speaking or moving is quiet. Silence is a given, quiet a gift. Silence is the absence of sound and quiet the stilling of sound. Silence can't be anything but silent. Quiet chooses to be silent. It holds its breath to listen. It waits and is still.
"In returning and rest you shall be saved," says God through the prophet Isaiah, "in quietness and confidence shall be your strength" (Isaiah 30:15). They are all parts of each other. We return to our deep strength and to the confidence that lies beneath all our misgiving. The quiet there, the rest, is beyond the reach of the world to disturb. It is how being saved sounds.
-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words
