Charles Spurgeon once relayed a story thus: “There came a young man to Demosthenes to learn oratory; he talked away at a great rate, and Demosthenes said, ‘I must charge you double fees.’ ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why,’ said the master, ‘I have first to teach you to hold your tongue, and afterwards instruct you how to speak." Then added, "The Lord teaches true penitents how to hold their tongues.”

In times of adversity, it is best to not try and figure everything out right away. We should rather be patient, reflect soberly and seek God's face, hoping in His mercy. Silence implies both an acceptance of God’s will and a refusal to complain. We learn a lot about God and ourselves in the school of meditative silence, especially in times of pain. It is natural to wail in adversity like Job, but God speaks to us mostly in the silence of our souls.

Beloved, we often need solitude to stay silent. We need to leave the crowd and its deafening noise to sit alone with God to speak with and hear from Him. Even when Christ took His disciples to the garden of Gethsemane before His arrest and crucifixion, He had to go a distance away from them in search of some privacy. He was in grief and needed to be alone with God (Matthew 26:36-46). What we saw in this chapter was the height of a practice He had mastered over time (Mark 1:35). While some unbelievers turn to alcohol in moments of grief to ‘drink away their sorrow’, Christians should know better and turn to God knowing that it is of His mercies that we are not consumed because His compassion doesn't fail (Lamentations 3:22). We hear God better, when we are quiet.