Wednesday: The Ten Days That Changed the World
WEEK 43
WEDNESDAY
THE TEN DAYS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
Acts 1:12-14
We are considering the mastery of enforced idleness. The disciples chose to wait ten days for God’s reinforcement within. They were the most important ten days of human history. They were “The Ten Days That Changed the World.” For it changed them. The greatest service a minister can give the congregation is to wait in the silence and listen to God. When pastors listen to God, then people will listen to them. William A. Quayle describes it thus:
When this preacher comes to a Sunday in his journey through the week, people ask him, “Preacher-man, where were you and what saw you while the workdays were sweating at their toil?” And then of this preacher we may say reverently: “He opened his mouth and taught them, saying”; and there will be another though lesser Sermon on the Mount. And the auditors sit and sob and shout under their breath, and say with their helped hearts, “Preacher, saw you and heard you that? You were well employed. Go out and listen and look another week; but be very sure to come back and tell us what you heard and saw.”*
That would not be preaching; it would be revelation.
Then choose to be idle. Choose to do nothing but receive. Choose to loaf in God’s presence and then you’ll be forever busy in God’s service.
Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said: “Hold your tongue for a day and you’ll talk sense forever.”** Be silent to God for a day, yes, for ten days if necessary; and you’ll be vocal and vital for God forever.
Someone has spoken of the “expectant silence of prayer.” The silence spent in God’s presence becomes expectant, expectant of love and power—yes, of God’s very self—to come within and make that within all glorious. When we fast from our activity, we feast upon God’s creativity. Then our activity becomes creativity. We lift one hand to God to receive and stretch out the other hand to give. Then when we give, we give nothing less than God. For we have found nothing less than God.
The enforced idleness of ten days at Pentecost were the most pregnant ten days in human history. The higher destiny of a race was in the womb of those hours. A new age was born.
O Holy Spirit, you who are Creation, help me to receive in the silence your creative power and love. I cannot go empty-handed into an empty world. I await your fullness. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall be a person of the Silence before I shall be a person of speech.
* William A. Quale, The Pastor-Preacher (New York: The Methodist Book Concern, 1915), 371.
** No published source was found for this quotation, but see Thomas Carlyle’s Collected Works, vol. 29, Latter-Day Pamphlets (London: Chapman and Hall, 1870).