7.22.2026

Last Sunday we sang one of my favorite hymns, a verse of which I’ve often used in my daily quiet time since I was in grad school:

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. 

What did the poet mean by “our ordered lives”? For John Greenleaf Whittier, a devout Quaker, an ordered life referred to a daily routine that was disciplined and grounded in quiet trust. An ordered life was free from chaos and restless striving, dedicated instead to peaceful, purposeful service where we can love others well and love God completely. 

Of course, the Enemy hates peace and quiet. In C.S. Lewis’ brilliant book, The Screwtape Letters, a senior demon describes the ultimate plan of Satan: “Music and silence–how I detest them both!….[Hell] has been occupied by Noise . . . We will make the whole universe a noise in the end . . . The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end.” 

Silence is the perfect way to hear God’s voice, but we are surrounded by noise — and not all of it is audible. We are constantly bombarded with information, both worthwhile and worthless. There is always competition for our attention with the intention of shaping us into something other than a child of God (typically, it turns us into better consumers of whatever they’re selling). 

Our endless, mindless scrolling through FaceBook and Twitter (and whatever else) pulls us away from being the sort of people God created us to be. We may not intend to do anything wrong, but we often end up setting our minds in neutral and our minds get lulled and shaped by things of the earth rather than by things above. 

But silence — pulling away from media in all its forms — and listening to God’s voice is an important tool God uses to shape us into the image of Christ. 

Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the 1200’s, wrote about curiositas and studiositas. Curiositas looks like curiosity, which doesn’t sound bad at all. In fact, all great human discoveries and inventions from fire to rockets have come about because of human curiosity. 

But Aquinas wasn’t writing about productive curiosity.  

Aquinas considered curiositas a form of gluttony. One way he defined it was “Wasting time on trivial knowledge while neglecting one's primary responsibilities and spiritual growth.” Reading that, I can’t help thinking about the endless hours so many spend on social media . . . scrolling . . . scrolling . . .  in a gluttonous desire for more . . . more . . . more. 

Another American poet, Walt Whitman (don’t I sound intelligent today! Some things from high school English actually stuck), wrote a poem about a young boy’s awakening as a poet: “Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking . . .” but I wonder what sort of  awakening the young boy’s going to get from “Out of the iPhone, endlessly scrolling . . .”

The opposite of curiositas is studiositas, the well-directed desire for knowledge that focuses our minds on wisdom, truth, and moral development. This is the concentrated effort that, while practiced away from the world’s noise, shapes us into Christ’s image. 

But information from studiositas isn’t enough. Information by itself never fixes anyone. I know my recliner is worse for me than my treadmill, but in the morning, when I’m wrapped up in a good book and a cup of coffee, which do you think is going to win?  The treadmill or the recliner? 

St. Augustine — who I rarely find worth quoting — said that when it comes to unfaithfulness in living for Christ, we don’t have a discipline problem; we have a loyalty problem. Augustine realized his failure to live a Christian life was never his lack of knowledge, but it was his disordered love. Your will doesn’t necessarily follow your best argument. Your will follows whatever you love most. 

I doubt anyone reading this would ever choose something evil for its own sake; we choose what is good . . . not always what is best, but still what is good. Rest is good; food and pleasure are good — the sin is loving a lesser good more than a greater good. We get the order wrong, which is why Augustine, in his book City of God, defined virtue as rightly ordered love. 

Most people think the answer to more faithful living is trying harder, but you don’t beat a strong love with willpower; you beat it with a stronger love.

And where is love cultivated? You know as well as I do. Anyone who has ever been in love knows it is cultivated in stillness, in silence, in simply being with the object of your love. Find a moment today to sit alone, make that verse I quoted from Whittier your prayer, and in that moment of silence — the first step toward Whittier’s “ordered life” — cultivate a greater love for God.

Because we give our time to what we love, and in the end we become what we love. 

Blessings,
Pastor Terry