Noise and hurry
The enemy's quiet allies
Through Isaiah, God offered his anxious people a strange-sounding strength: in returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength. And then the heartbreaking refusal: but you would not. They were offered salvation in stillness and chose, instead, frantic activity — and the choice was their undoing.
There is deep wisdom here about the enemy's strategy. He does not always need to tempt us toward something obviously evil; often it is enough to keep us hurried and surrounded by noise. A soul that is never quiet cannot hear God; a life that is always rushing has no room to be formed. Hurry and noise are not sins in themselves, which is exactly why they make such effective and undetected allies of the enemy. They crowd out the very stillness in which God works.
The quiet, unhurried life that Isaiah commends is increasingly countercultural and increasingly rare — and the enemy is glad to keep it that way, knowing that the constantly distracted, perpetually rushing soul is one he can lead almost anywhere, because it never slows down enough to notice where it is going. The remedy is the return to quietness and rest that God offered and his people refused. The question is whether we, too, will say, in effect, we would not.
“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”
— The Lord GOD, through Isaiah — Isaiah 30:15 (WEB)
Refuse the enemy's quiet allies of noise and hurry — choosing the returning and rest in which God saves and forms the soul.
“Better is a handful, with quietness, than two handfuls with labor and chasing after wind.”
We watch for moral threats and miss two of the enemy's most effective allies, which are not sins at all: noise and hurry, which leave no room for the stillness in which God speaks and forms us. The interior work is to recognize that the perpetually rushing, never-quiet soul can be led almost anywhere because it never slows to notice — and to choose, against the culture and our own refusal, the quietness and rest God offers.
This week, deliberately reduce noise and hurry: build in genuine silence, slow your pace on purpose, and leave margin in your schedule, choosing a handful with quietness over two hands full of frantic striving.
Noise and hurry are not sins, which is exactly why they make such useful allies; the soul kept loud enough and rushed enough never has to be made wicked, only too distracted to be formed or even to notice where it is drifting. But in returning and rest the soul is saved and shaped — and a quiet, unhurried life starves the distraction of everything it feeds on.
We tend to think of the threats to our souls as moral — the obvious temptations to sin. But two of the enemy's most effective allies are not sins at all: noise and hurry. A soul perpetually surrounded by sound and perpetually rushing has no room left for the stillness in which God speaks and forms us. The enemy does not need to make us wicked if he can simply keep us too busy and too loud to be formed.
This is why the quiet, unhurried life has become both rare and quietly subversive. God offered his people salvation in returning and rest, in quietness and confidence — and they would not, choosing frantic activity instead. We face the same choice daily, usually without noticing it. Better a handful with quietness, the Preacher says, than two hands full of toil and striving. Where has hurry and noise become the enemy's undetected ally in your life, crowding out the stillness you need to be formed?
- Have noise and hurry become undetected allies of the enemy in my life?
- Am I ever quiet enough, and slow enough, to be formed by God?
- Where am I, like Isaiah's people, refusing the rest God offers?
Lord, you offer salvation in returning and rest, in quietness and confidence, and like your people I so often will not. Free me from the noise and hurry the enemy uses against me. Slow me down, quiet me, and form me in the stillness. Amen.