The same words open every page on this site and they matter most here. This is not medicine. I am not a clinician, nothing on this page is treatment, and nothing I write ever stands in for a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. If anybody in that house is unwell, ring somebody qualified today, and do that before anything on this page about the quiet.
Now. There was a list and there is not one any more.
That is a strange thing to arrive at and nobody prepares anybody for it. For months there was always a next thing. Somebody to ring, something to read, something to ask about, a person who might know somebody.
And having a list is a kind of company. It is not a good kind, and it kept you up at night, and it also meant there was always something between you and the silence.
And now the last one has gone, and what has arrived is not grief exactly and not despair. It is a quiet, in a house, with nothing scheduled in it, and you genuinely do not know what a person is supposed to do in there.
The instruction is to wait and it is spoken to the soul
There is a line in the sixty second Psalm that is written for exactly this hour, and the thing to notice is who is being spoken to.
My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him. (Psalm 62:5, King James Version)
He is talking to himself. That is the whole shape of it. A man addressing his own soul out loud and telling it what to do, because nobody else was going to.
And what he tells it is to wait, which is an activity even though it does not look like one, and to wait only, which means he had run out of the other options too.
You are being handed something to do in the quiet, and waiting has never once been the same as nothing. Psalm 62:5 gives waiting as the instruction for the hour when the alternatives are gone, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person be still without reading it as defeat.
And the second half is where the weight sits. My expectation is from him. Not from the list. He had moved the whole expectation off the options and onto a person, which is the thing that has just been forced on you.
You have not lost the expectation, and it has never once been located in a list. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a person's hope off their own arrangements, and it is written that the waiting and the expectation are in one sentence addressed to a man's own soul.
Why the quiet feels like abandonment
Let me be practical, because I think the feeling in that house has a mechanism and it is worth knowing.
While there was a list, there was motion, and motion feels like being accompanied. Every next idea was evidence that something was still happening.
So when the list runs out, the mind reads the stillness as a change in the situation. Nothing is happening, therefore nothing is being done, therefore nobody is doing anything, therefore we have been left.
That last step is not true, and it is the one the whole feeling rests on.
You have been reading a silence as an absence, and a silence has never once been one. Psalm 62:5 has a man speak into exactly this quiet and name the expectation as still live, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when nothing is scheduled.
And I want to be careful, because this is the point where a page like this could push you somewhere. I am not going to give you another thing to try. That would be the unkindest possible response to where you are, and it is not what this site does.
You were never meant to keep generating options, and no household has ever once been sustained by a list. The Spirit of God is the one who lets somebody stop looking for the next thing, and what is written puts the waiting in place of the alternatives rather than alongside them.
The plain routing, which is not a new idea
Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and I want to be exact about it, because on this article it could be misread as one more thing to try.
If something is happening right now that frightens you, that is 911. If the heavy thing today is in your own mind, and if the quiet has got heavier than quiet, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And whatever the situation is, it stays with a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist, and if there has been no contact for a while, that call happens today.
You are keeping a door open rather than opening a new one. Psalm 62:5 puts the expectation on God without suspending anything ordinary in a person's life, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a page about waiting from becoming a reason to drop out of somebody's care.
That is not an idea and it is not on any list. It is maintenance, and it is the one thing I would keep going in the quiet.
You have one thing left that has never once been optional, and it is a phone call. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in an appointment made in a season where nothing is happening, and what is written waits on God while the days go on being ordinary days.
So here is the word I came with, and it is for one person with nothing left to try.
You are not abandoned in that quiet, and the end of the list has never once been the end of anything else. I am not making the silence sound nicer than it is. Psalm 62:5 has a man speak to his own soul in exactly this hour and tell it to wait only, which means every other option was already gone when he said it, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my telling who keeps somebody company in a kitchen where nothing is scheduled.
And this, which is the one I want left standing when the evening goes quiet:
You have been waited with, every evening of this, and the waiting has never once been empty. The Spirit of God is the one who is present when there is nothing to do and nothing to try, and what is written puts the expectation on God in the same breath as the instruction to wait.
If you want one sentence to say in the quiet, say this one: This did not fail because of me, and the quiet after the last idea is not the same as being abandoned.
Declare this over yourself
- Quiet that arrived when the list ran out, you are not an absence and you never were. Psalm 62:5 tells a soul to wait only upon God, so by the Holy Spirit you do not get to say we have been left, in the name of Jesus.
- Need to have a next thing at all times, you have no authority in this kitchen. The written word puts the expectation on God rather than on anything a person can arrange, and by the Holy Spirit I am finished reading stillness as the sign that nobody is doing anything.
- Father, You had a man speak to his own soul in the hour when everything else had run out. Your word says my soul, wait thou only upon God, so by Your Spirit I sit in the quiet today without reaching for anything, and I keep the one call that is not an idea.
Psalm 62:5
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.