The Art of Quieting the Soul

My thoughts tonight stem from my prayer time this afternoon. After work I went into my cute little Catholic church. I knelt before the tabernacle and let the memories and hectic schedule of my day flow out of my heart and mind and into the House of God.

It takes about 20 minutes for me to settle down before I can do any serious prayer. Even then sometimes it can be a challenge to speak to Jesus in a focused manner. Thoughts still pop in and out of my mind: what I will have for supper, what I will do for the rest of the day, if I will fall asleep easy tonight, what do I have to do tomorrow, and lately, what I'm anxious about, etc...

Then I start talking a lot to Jesus and spilling everything out of me. I pray for lots of things, which I will not reveal here in my blog. That is between me and Jesus. Sometimes I basically stop there and end my prayer. Tonight I caught myself and realized that here I was giving Jesus an earful and didn't listen to him in return.

Sometimes it is hard to quiet my soul enough to just listen and "be" with Him. Today I am looking forward to creating some time, perhaps on Sunday afternoon, when I can have a big chunk of time to go and sit with Jesus and get to that place of super quietness. The place where my mind isn't racing and I invite the Holy Spirit to come. For me sometimes I have to wait on the Lord for quite some time. Oh, he is there, but it takes such a long while to quiet my soul down so I can hear His still small voice.

I think one of the big tips on how to quiet your soul is to take ample time to wait in silence. Another thing that works for me is to see an image of Jesus in my mind or to ask the saints and angels and Mary to pray for me.

Sometimes I have to wait a really long time. Sometimes even months, but other times almost no time at all goes by and I am in my "Jesus Zone". He takes it from there.

One thing I want to say is that it is really a struggle to quiet the soul enough. Our world is so crazy and we really have to work at carving out time to discipline ourselves. It is hard to wait. It is hard to be silent sometimes. Sometimes it can be downright frustrating beause you think why wouldn't Jesus just show up when he has a willing creature sitting right there waiting.

I think Jesus makes us wait sometime so that we can practice the art of waiting and being still. We learn patience. We learn perceverence. We learn some discernment too. And I think in the waiting we show Jesus that we are serious about prayer and about wanting to connect with Him. We prove it to ourselves even more.

Quieting the Soul in today's world is very wierd indeed. From time to time when I bring up sitting in church and praying with say, a co-worker, they first look at me like I have two heads. Then they have a moment of admiration, and then they always say they could never do that. But that is defeatist. Of course they can. God made us to want Him and when people start getting in the habit of silence, they find it refreshing - almost like a good exercise workout, but different and better.

I won't go on and on about this. But if you are reading this little blog spot of mine and these words touch your soul in some way....take the challenge and carve out some quiet time for yourself and persevere. You see, Jesus wants to be with you so much and he wants you to make the silence so He can come and be with you. How can anyone pass up an invitation like that?