While teaching a class on Prayer at the Hong Kong Baptist Seminary, I quoted Isaiah 30:15 to illustrate prayerful meditation, “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” The blank look of the faces of the students told me I needed to stay on this subject a bit longer. Facing me was a classroom of Chinese students who lived in a city where “quietness” was non-existent. So if a source of strength is silence, and you live in 24/7 noise, how can you be strong? I went back to my apartment following class that evening, certain that I had failed to adequately answer the blank stares of my students. By the next class meeting, I had concluded that “quietness” does not always mean the absence of noise. Sometimes, it means the disciplined focus of the mind. Who has not lived in the midst of noise, near a railroad track, by a busy freeway, adjacent to an airport runway, or just in the midst of loud people, without learning how to block out the noisy? Familiarity with noise often breeds inner silence. So whether you are in a quiet place or a noisy place, be confident of this one thing: strength is available to you, at the price of self-discipline.
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