From “strain and stress” to “dews of quietness” and “beauty of peace”

Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace. (John Greenleaf Whittier 1872)

“Strain and stress” and “strivings” result from our natural need to survive. … For us, however, these emerge as the determination to influence and control every least aspect of our lives. Our self-dependence and self-reliance, the need to manage our food and clothes and worldly knowledge, might actually be the original sin that the Genesis writer is describing (Gen. 3). …The reality is that the world is going to roll on without us, without our imagined sense that we are controlling it—without our demands and our opinions and our concerns. Falling back from all the pushing and shoving, yielding just for a moment, allows the Lord to order our day, to take the burden from our shoulders and move it onto his. How effortless the “dews” of his “quietness” and the “beauty” of his peace! (Living Calm ©️ 2016)