The Stillness of Worship

This morning in our church service, Pastor Alvin L. had us worship God in complete stillness. God filled up the stillness with Himself. Tonight, I am having a hard time sleeping. I probably ate too much leftover wedding cake. So, I picked up my 'Celebration of Discipline' book by Richard Foster and opened it up to my next portion to read. It was entitled, 'Avenues of Worship.' This is what I read.
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"The first avenue of worship is to still
all humanly initiated activity.
The stilling of "creaturely activity,"
as the patriarchs of the inner life called it,
is not something to be confined
to formal worship services,
but it is a life-style.

It is to permeate the daily fabric of our lives.

We are to live in a perpetual, inward,
listening silence so that God is the source
of our words and actions.

If we are accustomed to carrying out the
business of our lives in human strength and wisdom,
we will do the same in gathered worship.

If, however, we have cultivated the habit
of allowing every conversation,
every business transaction
to be divinely prompted,
that same sensitivity will flow
into public worship.

Francois Fenelon writes,
"Happy the soul which by a sincere self-renunciation,
holds itself ceaselessly in the hands of its Creator,
ready to do everything which he wishes;
which never stops saying to itself
a hundred times a day,
"Lord, what wouldst thou that I should do?"

...To still the activity of the flesh
so that the activity of the Holy Spirit
dominates the way we live
will affect and inform public worship.

Sometimes it will take the form of absolute silence.
Certainly it is more fitting to come in
reverential silence and awe
before the Holy One of eternity
than to rush into His Presence
with hearts and minds askew
and tongues full of words.

The scriptural admonition is,
"The LORD is in His holy temple;
let all the earth keep silence before Him."
(Hab. 2:20)

The desert Father Ammonas writes;
"Behold, my beloved.
I have shown you the power of silence,
how thoroughly it heals
and how fully pleasing it is to God...

It is by silence that the saints grew...
it was because of silence that the power
of God dwelt in them,
because of silence that the mysteries
of God were known to them.""
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Most of the times,
when I hold Adison, age two,
in my arms, we are quiet.
I absorb her sweetness
and she absorbs my love.

If we were chatting away too much
we wouldn't have time to absorb.

In a sense,
we are worshiping each other
with our quiet absorption.

I think God would like us to do this with Him.

I think He would like us to be still in His arms
and absorb His strength and goodness.

I think He would like to be absorbed into
our spirits even as He absorbs us into His.

I absorb and adore Him.
He absorbs and adores me.

I think that being still
is the best way to absorb God
and to be swallowed up by Him.
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Lord,
my heart is not haughty,
Nor my eyes lofty.
Neither do I concern myself with great matters,
Nor with things too profound for me.

Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul,
Like a weaned child with his mother;
Like a weaned child is my soul with in me.

Hope in the LORD
From this time forth and forever.

Psalm 131
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"You, Father, are in Me and I am in You...
and I am in them..." (Complete absorption)

(Jesus' prayer, just minutes before He was betrayed)