Find Solitude by Francis J. Roberts
There is no blessing I would
withhold from those who walk in obedience to Me--who follow when I call, who
respond when I speak to them. Near to My heart and precious in My sigh are
those who have eyes to discern my purpose and ears that listen to My direction.
Do not be intent on great
accomplishments. By what standards do you judge the importance of a matter? It
was a relatively small thing that Hannah prayed for a son, but what great
things I accomplished through Samuel! It may have seemed incidental that Simeon
and Anna perceived the Christ child and prophesied over him; but for Me it was
an event worthy to be recorded in Holy Scripture and preserved forever.
No, you cannot ascertain the ways
of God amid the pathways of men. You may feel the wind as I pass and yet only see
the swirling dust. The earthly obscures the heavenly. Human voices drown out
the voice of God. Only in solitude can you begin to sift away the chaff and
come at last to the golden grains of truth.
The world will confuse you. Silence
will speak more to you in a day than the world of voices can teach you in a
lifetime. Find silence. Find solitude—and having discovered her riches, bind
her to your heart.
This
passage connects not only to how I should live my religious life but also my
academic life. I do my best work when I am completely focused, meaning I have
to turn everything else off. This can be a hard thing to do, especially when
your friend texts or wants to hang out. With writing, as with life, there are
so many distractions and one of the hardest things that I personally fight
against is becoming distracted or procrastinating because I am distracted by something
else. For me to truly be able to sit down and know that I am going to write an
essay and work hard on it I have to have silence everywhere and be able to
focus. If there is anything else going on, I only focus on my writing for a
little while before I get distracted and move on to focusing on another subject.
Every time I write a paper or work on editing something, I know that I need it
to be quiet and to be focused, yet it is always hard for me to get into the “writing
grove”. As a writer, I need to be able
to sit down and focus on the task at hand instead of getting distracted by
every little noise or event around me.
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