If we are silent when we should speak, we are not living the Discipline of silence. If we speak when we should be silent, we again miss the mark.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of knowing when to speak and when to remain silent.
Richard J. Foster's quote highlights the delicate balance between speech and silence in our lives. It suggests that true wisdom lies in understanding when it is appropriate to express our thoughts and when it is better to remain quiet. Failing to do so can lead us to miss valuable opportunities for authentic living and meaningful communication.
In practice
During a discussion on conflict resolution, you might use this quote to emphasize the importance of knowing when to listen.
Go another step. Try to live one entire day without words at all. Do it not as a law, but as an experiment. Note your feelings of helplessness and excessive dependence upon words to communicate. Try to find new ways to relate to tohers that are not dependent upon words. Enjoy, savor the day. Learn from it.
Jesus Christ and all the writers of the New Testament call us to break free of mammon lust and live in joyous trust...They point us toward a way of living in which everything we have we receive as a gift, and everything we have is cared for by God, and everything we have is available to others when it is right and good. This reality frames the heart of Christian simplicity. It is the means of liberation and power to do what is right and to overcome the forces of fear and avarice.
Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God's great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it.
Humility, as we all know, is one of those virtues that is never gained by seeking it. The more we pursue it the more distant it becomes. To think we have it is sure evidence that we don't.
When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.
The Spiritual Disciplines are things that we do. We must never lose sight of this fact. It is one thing to talk piously about 'the solitude of the heart,' but if that does not somehow work its way into our experience, then we have missed the point of the Disciplines. We are dealing with actions, not merely states of mind.
Sadness is just a place on the map. Don't try to avoid it, resist it or escape through substances. Settle it, allow it, and it will go.
None of us can come to the highest maturity without enduring the summer heat of trials.
The future will show whether my foresight is as accurate now as it has proved heretofore.
O, happy the soul that saw its own faults.
The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive.
Instead of resisting any emotion, the best way to dispel it is to enter it fully, embrace it and see through your resistance.
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