A quiet mind. . .

Compline's opening versicle bids the Lord grant us a quiet mind and peace at the last.  In one of the older prayers of the Church we ask God to grant grace to those who rule that we may lead quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty.  In one of the bidding prayers of the Church we pray that we may serve Him in peace and quietness.  In an evening prayer we beg the Lord to shelter us in the quiet hours of the night that those wearied by the changes and chances of this passing world may rest in His changeless peace.  In one of the prayers for good government we ask God to graciously regard those in authority over us that we may be governed quietly and peaceably.  We pray for the gift of a quiet sleep.  There is no shortage of collects in which we pray for godly peace and quietness, to serve Him in all godly quietness, and to serve Him with a quiet mind.  We pray in the collect for peace to live in peace and quietness.           

These are prayers to be released from anxiety, to be sure but not simply so.  Freedom from anxiety is not the absence of trouble but a heart which rests upon Him in whom such quietness is to be found.  To live with the peace of a clear conscience is to live within the grace of forgiveness and to forgive those who sin against you. The sacramental grace of absolution is not merely an external one but internally acquaints the heart with peace and quietness in a conscience troubled with sin and guilt and shamed by them as well.  One does not go to confession to fulfill some perfunctory ritual obligated to us but to enter into that precious state of peace and quietness which the world and the devil works to steal.  It is also the fruit of our participation in Christ's redeeming work, receiving the gift of His mercy in the Holy Eucharist.  As once we prayed in the embolism:   Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  It is quite literally a tossed in prayer summarizing all the petitions -- as common to the praying of the Our Father in the Latin Church as the doxology is to Protestantism. 

Peace and harmony and therefore quietness are in short supply today.  It shows in the statistics for depression and anxiety that have made these epidemic.  It is revealed in the way we close ourselves off from each other and from the world because we do not know how to deal with our discontent.  But this is an elegant grace and a generous gift to a people who live in a world of change -- dizzying change.  Some of it is by our own making and absolution promises us some peace for these.  Other of it is beyond our ken.  We are like the small boat upon the mighty waves.  We beg the Lord for some peace, for a place in the storms of our lives, and for quietness to catch up on it all before it all overwhelms us.  God help us in this.  The haunts of yesterday's sins and the quavering heart before temptation will surely steal from us every last ounce of our peace unless we rest in the Lord and in Him rest all that would taunt and trouble us.  It is not simply okay to pray for peace and quietness -- it is exactly this for which we pray at God's bidding and promise.  He will not turn away.