Yelling Thoughts?

How often have you felt that your mind is cluttered with a myriad thoughts. There are times when you desire to have a pristine thought pattern but suddenly experience a deluge of thoughts invading your mind.

Our lives are crammed with activities. Especially in a digital age like ours noise is ubiquitous. Noise has become such an intimate part of this generation that silence to many seems eerie. Gregariousness has become the motto and the plethora of social networks will testify to this fact. Besides the noise that is tangible to our senses, the real challenge is dealing with the noise that lurks in our minds. Thanks once again to our busy lives. We smother our minds with endless lists and information just about one day. Imagine the information for a week, a month and so on. All these information come back to haunt us with restlessness and anxiety.

Of late I've been stressed with a ruthless invasion of incongruous thoughts, distracting me in every way. I coerced myself to concentrate on God, Scriptures, books and the like. My efforts ditched me. I felt my mind strangled by this unanticipated conquest of this abstract force. What should one do about such a predicament?

I am not expected to express my prowess in subduing my mind to some vague esoteric force. But the superb antidote to this seemingly unrelenting problem is the Discipline of Silence and Solitude. Solitude is the act of secluding oneself so one can remain silent. 

The Bible calls me to gently lay myself at the feet of the dear Lord. 

Zephaniah 1:7 says,

[7] Be silent before the Lord GOD! 

Zechariah 2:13

[13] Be silent, all flesh, before the LORD

David says in Psalm 62:1-2

[1] For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. [2] He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.

Above everything we have the superior example to emulate, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Mark 1:35

[35] And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.

Matthew 14:23 

[23] And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. 

In the midst of catering to a mobbish crowd, Jesus departed and constantly kept this Discipline of Silence and Solitude. His sweetest time on earth was whenever He spent time alone with His dear heavenly Father. 

We are compelled by such an example. Unlike Jesus, we are redeemed from sin and we still are mired by the impurities that remain within. So this rendezvous with our Father will awaken our slumbering senses to the purposeful life that God has called us to. Our hearts will be suffused with the heavenly love of God. The invincible peace of the Almighty shall pervade the deep crevices of our hearts and shall dispel anxiety. This discipline helps us to be fixated on God. Also beware that this silence will uninhibitedly remind us of our sins. This discipline will also help us to lean on God even more. Myriads of spiritual benefits shall we reap if practiced regularly. 

Of course we cannot always jaunt over to the marooned outskirts of our bustling cities to be all by ourselves. Donald Whitney suggests that instead of fruitlessly trying to escape a noisy ambiance,

"It's possible to provide that same kind of brief refreshment on occasion throughout your day. A moment at a traffic light, in an elevator, or in line at a drive-through can become a "minute retreat" when you consecrate it as a time of silence and solitude. You can use the time of prayer at a meal for a spiritual pause" (Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life - Donald Whitney)

'Minute Retreat' is his counsel. To quickly smuggle those time intervals in our daily lives shall offer us a powerful gander of our eternal rest.

For more information please read Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life - Donald Whitney