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Old Meeting House Congregational Church (1643)

The Best Hidden Church in Norwich

In the quiet place we can learn peace

 

Ordinary men, today, unfamiliar with the hidden depth of God which many of our Puritan forefathers found, necessarily live busy, fussy, ambitious, care-ridden lives. They’re always fretful, always restless, always looking for that illusive “something more.”

But those who have learned to turn their energies toward God can be calm in the hustle and bustle of today’s frantic marketplace as well as the tedium and weariness of the commonplace, quiet in the midst of life’s homeliest duties and excessive demands.

F. B. Meyer says that most of us are like folks living in a one-room house located too close to the street. There’s no way to escape from the noise and commotion outside. But we can build a soundproof room within and make it our dwelling place – a secret chamber to ponder God’s word and talk things over with Him in 2016.

“We fill our little space,” Meyer says, “we get our daily bread and are content; we enjoy natural and simple pleasures; we do not strive, nor cry, nor cause our voice to be heard in the street; we pass through the world, with noise-less tread, dropping a blessing on all we meet.”

It’s in that quiet place that we learn peace and share that peace with others. The Scottish Congregationalist, the late George MacDonald, put it this way: “There is a chamber – a chamber in God Himself which none can enter but the one, the individual, the particular man. Out of which chamber that man brings revelation and strength to others. This is that for which he was made – to reveal the secret things of the Father.”

We’re distracted because we’ve lost that orientation, but we can learn again to be quiet. We can take our anxious worry and nervous energy to Jesus. When people disappoint us, and they always do, we can confide in Him. When storms sweep over us we can hide in Him. When people jostle one another and jockey for position, when they compete for fame and fortune and their passions begin to stir us we can run to that little chamber, shut the door and quiet our hearts again.

Only our Lord knows what trails lies ahead in 2016 but in these turbulent times may we all learn more about the peace which can only be given us by the Prince of Peace.

John.

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