In my journal last Thursday while vacationing in the sparsely populated area east of Brooksville, Maine, on the beautiful Penobscot Bay, I wrote:
“The early morning and late evening silence of Ocean Garden is simply amazing. No sound of crickets, frogs, no cars or trucks on the road. No airplanes flying overhead. No motor boats in the water. Not even the sound of waves lapping against the jagged rocks that line the coast. No gulls squawking on shore or in the air. No human voices. Nothing, nothing but silence. A silence that speaks to your soul saying, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) Yet in this silence God speaks through the calm waters, the blue sky, the green spruce and fir, the birch trees, the flowers that abound in and around this place. He speaks of peace, tranquility, power, beauty and majesty. In a turbulent world where man stirs hatred, bigotry, violence and war, the soul cries out for this calm, this peace, this stillness.”
For quiet reading, I spent devotional time reading Gordon MacDonald’s book, “The Life God Blesses.” It’s a thought provoking book about spiritual depth, about nourishing the soul in such a manner that when the storms of life come, as they do, you have adequate spiritual resources to deal with them. Whether you refer to your inner life as heart, spirit or soul, it all has to do with the real you – the person you really are when there is no one around – that part that only you and God know. Our inner self is that part of us that cannot be ignored without serious consequences. That inner depth or lack of for which you and I will give an account to God.
Spiritual depth is to our soul what a well-built keel is to a sailboat. A sailboat with a sufficient keel has the ability to confront a storm and even to right itself if turned over by turbulent waters. A sailboat without a proper keel is a disaster waiting to happen. A life without spiritual depth is also a disaster waiting to happen. If we fail to nourish our soul, we rob ourselves of the spiritual resources necessary to face the storms of life. If we fail to worship God, to have our quiet times of meditation, to feed our soul on God’s Word and reflect upon it our lives become hallow and the inevitable storms of life will take their toll upon us.
Without soul food our inner self perishes as sure as our bodies perish without physical food. Jesus warned, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit (starve) their soul?” (Matthew 16:26 NIV) Do you know the peace that Jesus offers? Is your soul crying out for spiritual food? The well-nourished soul is the life that God blesses.
In His Love,
Charles
