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May 3, 2008
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=========================== TODAY'S ARTICLE ==========================
Place of Quiet Rest, by Bill Sherrill
The Lord your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you with His love,
He will rejoice over you with singing (Zephaniah 3:17 NKJV).
Is there a place, which lies within your memory, where you go for
refuge? A place where the insults and fears drift away and give
residence to feelings of joy and peace?
Bee Rock was such a place for me in my youth, and my mind still goes
there in these later years. Just a few miles to the north of my home
town, where the Little Red River made its last assault on the foothills
of the Ozark Mountain uprise, before spreading lazily into the widening
soft soil of the flatlands, there was a bluff of sheer stone
overhanging the river. At one time, many years earlier, men had
shattered the peace and quiet of the area, blasting with dynamite, to
recover the stone for gravel roads. But now, the old gravel plant is
long gone and the noise of its thundering blasts and raging rock
crusher have given way to the gentle breezes and the peaceful songs of
the Mourning Dove and Bobwhite Quail. Just at the south edge of that
ragged gouge where men robbed Nature of her treasure, there is a
prominence which is untouched, still beautiful and serene. And my heart
is often found there, drawing once more the peace and serenity that
heals the troubled soul.
Some of my best decisions were made on that outcropping over the Little
Red River. Perhaps the most important one of my life among them. I have
a friend who was my idol as a boy. He was brighter than most. His mind
filled with a thousand wonders and a heart of science. We were both
fascinated with guns and often slipped away to the gravel pit to test
some new rifle or shell. And we never left without climbing to the
point which rose more than one hundred feet over the Little Red River.
But I was speaking of important decisions, two rush clearly to my mind.
The first changed the character of my speech for life. Sitting there on
the point, and I suspect wanting to impress Bill Rushton with my
maturity, I included a few good words of profanity in a statement I
likely thought profound. There was a silence while he looked straight
into my face. Then he replied, "That is the dumbest thing I've ever
heard you say!" I was crestfallen, but I never used foul language
again.
The second, the one to which I referred as being the most important in
my life, came at a time when I struggled desperately to hold some sense
of faith in God and His Word. Bill and I sat there in our place,
leaning back against the lone tree which had clung to the bare rocks to
survive many a storm, and we silently gazed at the beauty of that view.
To the north lay the ragged cliffs of the gravel pit. To the northeast
the Little Red River flowed with turbulent stream through Echo Dell and
became quiet as it slowed in the wider pool which lay below us. With
the mountain still rising to our backs in the west and the gentler
hills to the east, we sat and thought. A thing we both loved to do to
separate ourselves from the turmoil of life away from this wonderful
spot. Bill spoke without even looking in my direction. "A man would
have to be a fool not to believe in God in a place like this." If his
bright mind saw God there, then surely it must be true!
A man would have to be a fool not to believe in God in a place like
this.
There is a line from an old song that comes to mind:
There is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God.
A place where fears cannot molest, near to the heart of God.
For me, Bee Rock must be that place, "near to the heart of God."
---------
(c) 2008 Bill Sherrill <sherrill@cox-internet.com>'s Thought for
the Week. Used by permission.
RELATED LINKS:
* Rest from Your Labor
http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200609/20060904_restfromlabor.html
* Get Away and Rest
http://www.heartlight.org/two_minute/2m_990303_rest.html
* Come Away to a Quiet Place
http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200706/20070618_quietplace.html
* Bill Sherrill's Thought for the Week
http://www.northstreetcoc.org/ThoughtoftheWeek.html
This article can be found on the web at:
http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200805/20080503_quietrest.html
=========================== FEATURED PRODUCT =========================
SEE THE MORNING, by Chris Tomlin
Award-winning artist Tomlin offers a whole new set of soul-inspiring
easy-to-sing songs about God's faithfulness.
http://shopping.heartlight.org/cgi-shl/link?260
Find more great books, CDs and videos at the Heartlight store! With
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