Quiet Me

"The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness;
He will quiet you by His love;
He will exult over you with loud singing.”

—Zephaniah 3:17

Life is hard. We do and go through all sorts of things. We may go through trials, tribulations, or even periods of great rebellion. Sometimes we wish that life were just a carnival ride and we could say, “Stop the world, I want to get off!” But we can’t. Life goes on in all of its madness, mediocrity, and rigor. But, what we can do is stop and remember who God is. Today’s passage is a reminder that God is in our midst, ready to help, ready to rejoice over hearts that turn to Him, ready to quiet us with His love, exulting over us in singing.

Quieting us with His love is a picture of a child being quieted by a parent. After everything is said and done, when life has thrown its ugly arrows and we want to give up, God comes to us ready to quiet us and to still our souls with His love. The Bible says that God is love (1 John 4:8), which means that He is loving in His essence. He loves us not because He is compelled to—as if there were some outside force that made Him do it. No, He loves us because it is who He is and it is what He has chosen to do. The love of God is one of the most immense, freeing, and mystifying subjects to study because God loves the unlovely. It is one thing to love something that is lovable, but quite another to love an enemy, yet God does (Romans 5:8). God loves because it is His nature and because He chooses to lavish His love upon us. He didn’t have to create us, sustain us, and make Himself known to us. He did so because He wanted to share the love that He, the Triune God, had within Himself. Creation is the desire of God to display the wondrousness of His love and share it with us. The fact that God created us is one giant demonstration of His love. He didn’t have to do anything—but He did for reasons that are far beyond our ability to understand or comprehend.

When this prophecy from Zephaniah was given, the nation of Israel was split into two: Israel (the northern kingdom) and Judah (the southern kingdom). Zephaniah prophesied to the southern kingdom of Judah of a coming day when the nations would be transformed, wrongs would be made right, and God’s people would be restored. Within his prophecy we are able to see love in action. God’s love will so overflow to the people that they will be quieted by it.

Picture a small child in tears, fearful at the trouble they’re in, unable to do anything, but only run into their parent’s arms and bury their little faces in their parent’s chest. The parent soothes them with soft words of love and compassion. The crying dissipates because they are calmed by love. God’s love causes us to be quiet, to be still, and feel safe. For those who have come to know Christ, there is a sweet serenity from thinking about His love. God’s love comes to us in many ways, but His greatest display of love came in giving us His Son (1 John 4:9-10; cf. John 3:16). God loves us. He is a mighty one ready to save, but He is also ready to quiet His children that are hurting. To all who come to God and say, “Quiet me with your love,” He will show you the depth of His love displayed at Calvary. He showed the depth of His love by giving His Son to die for His enemies—that is, us. God’s love comes to us when we were far away and unlovely. He saw us in our rebellion and still chose to die for us and give us salvation. What great love! May we rest in His love, knowing that there is nothing we could do to earn it—it is given because of who He is. Amen.