*This was written
50 years ago before the internet, before cell phones, Twitter & Facebook.
Make it your
ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your
hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect
of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12
We Christians must simplify our lives or
lose untold treasures on earth and in eternity!
Modern civilization is so complex as to
make the devotional life all but impossible, multiplying distractions and
beating us down by destroying our solitude.
“Commune with your own heart upon your bed
and be still” is a wise and healing counsel, but how can it be followed in this
day of the newspaper, the telephone, the radio and the television? These modern
playthings, like pet tiger cubs, have grown so large and dangerous that they
threaten to devour us all. No spot is now safe from the world’s intrusion.
One way the civilized world destroys men is
by preventing them from thinking their own thoughts. Our “vastly improved
methods of communication” of which the shortsighted boast so loudly now enable
a few men in strategic centers to feed into millions of minds alien thought
stuff, ready-made and predigested.
The need for solitude and quietness was
never greater than it is today. Even the majority of Christians are so
completely conformed to this present age that they, too, want things the way
they are.
However, there are some of God’s children
who have had enough. They want to relearn the ways of solitude and simplicity
and gain the infinite riches of the interior life. They want to discover the blessedness
of what has been called “spiritual aloneness”—a discipline that will go far in
making us acquainted with God and our own souls!
Very early in
the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off
to a solitary place, where he prayed. Mark
1:35
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