When we’re serving overseas, our home assignments often include house hopping. With each hop, we might thank God for the blessing of our gracious friends’ beautiful homes. But we can quickly grow weary of living out of suitcases; not to mention the challenge of leaving things just the way we found them. One of the worst feelings of all is discovering a scratch or stain or break as we're preparing to leave. Was that here when we got here or is this something we did???

One summer while house hopping, I happened to discover Invitation to Solitude and Silence by Ruth Haley Barton on our friends’ bookshelf. The title connected with my growing desire for quiet space in that hectic season with two active boys and so much unsettledness. But as I dug into its richness, I was struck with the author’s differentiation between a desire just to get time alone and a desire to connect with God.

“Solitude and silence are not self-indulgent exercises for times when an overcrowded soul needs a little time to itself. Rather, they are concrete ways of opening to the presence of God beyond human effort and beyond the human constructs that cannot fully contain the Divine.”

Her clarification helped me to see that most of the time I think about silence and solitude, I'm just craving some down time to recharge. Opening myself to the presence of God would also mean taking a closer look at myself. And I'd rather pretend that everything is going just fine. I don't really want to see the stains and scratches and broken places inside. Is that what I really look like???

But I love Barton’s quote from Parker Palmer: 

“Solitude eventually offers a quiet gift of grace that comes whenever we are able to face ourselves honestly: the gift of acceptance, of compassion, for who we are as we are. As we allow ourselves to be known in solitude, we discover that we are known by love. Beyond the pain of self-discovery there is a love that does not condemn us but calls us to itself. This love receives us as we are.” 

When we discover this quiet gift of grace, God’s all-knowing and accepting love invites us to find our true home, like the sparrow, near His altar. 

“Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young—a place near your altar, Lord Almighty, my King and my God.” Psalm 84:3 (NIV)