You’re my place of quiet retreat; I wait for your Word to renew me.

Psalm 119:114 MSG

These words fill me with sweetness and with longing. Don’t we all need this? A place of quiet retreat. A time of renewal. Our loving Jesus calls us to Him – from frenetic action, from the barrage of constant stimuli. From performing, from being seen. From the need for approval, from the drive for more “likes.”

Rest and retreat

Another version puts it this way: “You’re my place of quiet rest.” In both “rest” and “retreat” the sense of the noisy clamor is being silenced. This quiet rest – it wraps us in tenderness. 

Exhausted, worn out, and weary we fall into His Word. And stay there. We wait. No haste here. We allow His Words to work in us, to take root, to quicken, come alive.

As if taking trip to a hushed wood, a cabin. We go down to the dock sit in front of the lake. Soak in the beauty of nature. Hear the water lapping up unto the shore. See the sky, cloudless and blue. His Word is nurture, refreshment, renewal. 

To whom shall we go?

Peter caught the essence of this when during a difficult time, Jesus asked His disciples if they would also leave Him.

Peter’s reply is full of pathos, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You [alone] have the words of eternal life [you are our only hope].

John 6:68 AMP

Bread of life

His Words are life and hope. Without them we languish, falter, grow weak. Deut. 8:3b declares it – “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

So, we come, quiet and still. He, the Bread of life – His Words our very life, our sustenance. And as we wait His Words refresh us, renew us. 

We can trust His Word, settle into it, know with certainty: 

 “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.”

1 Peter 1:24 – 25