Introduction

This talk was given at St. Peter’s Church on August 10, 2025. Revd. Mark Fletcher explores spiritual stillness through the beautiful imagery of Psalm 131, showing how we can find peace in our noisy world. He challenges us to learn the essential discipline of stilling our souls in God’s presence like a weaned child trusts its mother.

This world is a noisy place and it is getting noisier and I don’t just mean traffic noise or police sirens or airplanes overhead, or people talking all the time on telephones. I mean, our political and social discourse is getting noisier. Too many people shouting to be heard and it isn’t good for us.

That kind of noise triggers emotional and stress responses in us, and when it all gets too much, what do we do? We try and drown it out with more noise. We put our headphones on and we listen to music or turn on the radio or listen to a podcast. And we have, it seems lost, the ability to be still. And our inner lives are noisy too.

We used to live opposite a primary school in London and it was a lovely place to be. But every break time, oh my goodness. The noise, and it wasn’t just the children running around and shouting and screaming. It was the teachers shouting at them to behave. It was quite a stressful place to be and I worry that all too often our inner lives are a little bit like that playground, a cacophony of thoughts and emotions and fears and anxieties.

Blaise Pascal famously once said, most of our problems arise from the inability to sit quietly with ourselves. And I don’t know if it’s most of our problems, but I think it’s serious. Is there a better way? Yes, there is. Is it easy to find? No, largely because of all of the noise.

Marilyn just read for us Psalm 131 and it is a lovely one. It’s one of my favorites. It’s also very short and yet it is rich and beautiful. It is simply three verses of profound wisdom. And I wonder if you can picture the scene. I imagine that it’s David looking at his young wife with their young child and seeing this scene of tranquility and then reflecting on his own relationship with God and his own soul.

It’s a beautiful picture and he writes, I have stilled and quieted my soul. Like a weaned child within me is my soul. I’d like to reflect on that. Because I suspect that it is one of the spiritual disciplines, which is most needed in this noisy world, and I think we need to learn to wean ourselves off the noise.

And so David writes, My heart is not proud O Lord. My eyes are not haughty. I do not concern myself with great matters. There is so much in this world that demands our attention all the time, whether that’s demands of work or school, or the constant demands of the news or social media or those devices that we carry around in our pockets all the time, which are always demanding our attention.

And while some of that may be important, I think often these are just new ways into tapping into some of our oldest failings: our pride, our desire to be important, our attempts to try to be in control. And those roads almost always lead either to an inflated sense of self-importance or anxiety, or both on different days.

We will not find the peace that Jesus has to offer us until we learn that there are things that we simply have to trust God with. There are things we can’t and won’t know and there are things that we cannot control. Did you see David wrote, I have stilled and quieted my soul. Can you see that it’s a choice that we make.

It is an action. I have stilled. I have quieted my soul, and it speaks of choosing a place of trust and peace and stilling our anxious hearts and minds in the presence of God. He says, Like a weaned child with its mother is my soul within me. Now you might think, well, what does that image mean? But if you think of a newborn, and the parents here will know that well, a newborn will cry every time it needs something, every time it’s uncomfortable.

And that’s a good thing and a natural thing. And it is a way of making its parents do exactly what they need to do. You might remember that the cry of a newborn stirs a real stress reaction in the parents and you have to act. However, a weaned child has learned that it is loved and that it is cared for, that their needs will be met, that they can trust their parents to look after them.

They are satisfied and they have enough. And they’re ensured that they are loved by the gentle embrace of a parent. They know that they’re safe and they don’t need to worry about the future because someone else is doing that for them. And I wonder, can you see the parallel with our own souls. As we learn to be with God, as we spend time in his presence, we learn that in him, we have enough that we are loved, that we can trust, and that we are safe. And by contrast, our distractedness, our failure to find time to be in God’s presence makes it really hard for us to know those things. Three things. In the presence of God, we learn that we have enough. We’ve said before, haven’t we, you don’t always get what you want, but you find that in Christ you get what you need. Our Heavenly Father does provide for us, but he provides our daily bread and that life is a gift given by God one day at a time. And peace is found, not in the accumulation of more and more, but in learning to be grateful, to appreciate what we do have, the simple blessings of everyday life.

In the presence of God, we learn that we have enough. Secondly, in the presence of God, we know that we are loved. I fear that so much of the shouting, in this world is a shout for attention and a shout to seem or feel important, and is ultimately a desire to be loved. But love is never found that way.

And we find the experience of love in the presence of God. And of course that love is the source of all love. For God is love, and we need to come back to that source day by day. Without that, we demand too much of our loved ones, but with it, we are enabled to simply love selflessly without demanding anything in return, and that kind of love grows and generates more love.

In the presence of God, we discover that we are loved and that is the source of love, which is the foundation of our lives. So in the presence of God, we learn that we have enough. In the presence of God we know that we are loved. And thirdly, in the presence of God, we can trust that we are safe. This life can be very scary.

It does often seem out of control. Doesn’t it? But we know that though we can’t control the future, we know someone who does. That all things are in our Heavenly Father’s hands. David wrote, I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. The future is not mine to know and it is not yours.

And no matter how I work, it will always be like the best laid plans of mice and men. But to be in the presence of God is to know the one who does hold the future in his hands. And instead, I can say to God, I know that you have got this. And so in the presence of God, like that weaned child, we learn to trust that we are safe.

So what that means in practice I think is that day by day I need to make time. To shut out the noise. To practice stilling my heart and my mind in the presence of God with the help of his word, by his spirit, I can know God’s presence with me. It is a spiritual discipline that needs to be learned. It won’t just happen.

Remember David said, I have stilled and quieted my soul, and it isn’t easy. I think by nature our hearts are like the children in the playground running around, always on the edge of being out of control. As we learn to sit quietly at Jesus’ feet, to know the blessing of his presence, to hear his words so we can echo the psalmist, and I must say, I think that our proud hearts will resist this.

Don’t be surprised if you find this difficult. Any discipline makes those proud hearts rebel. But perhaps the most important thing to know is that it is possible that we can find stillness in the presence of God. And it is good and it is a discipline to learn. And when you fail, which you will, don’t give up, come back, seek, knock, and ask.

And of course it is scripture that will lead you there, that that is its job. It reminds us and teaches us and leads us into God’s presence. That’s what it is there for. And in the stillness, we can allow that still small voice of the Holy Spirit to apply God’s word to our hearts and our lives. And I have to say that this discipline, I find, is essential for the hard times.

I think you need to learn this when things aren’t too bad, so that then when things really are difficult, you can find that place, those places of stillness and refreshing. That the Good Shepherd will lead us to still waters and green pastures which will restore our soul. We learn little by little to put our trust in our loving Heavenly Father.

Verse three says, O people of God hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore. To live well in this anxious and noisy world, we need to learn to quiet and still our restless hearts just as the psalmist does. And it is a conscious, deliberate thing, a choice to learn to sail through the storm instead of being blown by it.

As Saint Augustine said, Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God. So should we take a moment now just to do this together? Still our hearts and minds hear God’s invitation into his presence and taste and see that the Lord is good. Let’s be still together, shall we?