“LORD, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I do not get involved with things too great or too wondrous for me. Instead, I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like a weaned child.”
—Psalm 131:1-2 (CSB)
What is a calm and quiet soul? To answer that question it may prove helpful to look at what it’s not.
A calm and quiet soul is not about operating at a complacent pace. Complacency often looks like sloth, inaction, and laziness. A complacent pace produces passivity over time. Its sole desire is to maintain the status quo. A complacent pace does less than God has asked.
Yet, at the same time, a calm and quiet soul is not about operating at a fatal pace. Such a pace looks like constant activity—moving at marvelous speeds that produce negative consequences over time and cause harm, not only to a person’s soul, but to their relationship with God and others. A fatal pace does more than God has asked.
To find the sacred pace—the space where our soul is calm and quiet—we must do what God has asked. Nothing more. Nothing less.
A calm and quiet soul rests in God. It finds its contentment in him alone.
We all have different capacities and personalities. My sacred pace may be your fatal pace. Someone else’s complacent pace may be your sacred pace. The most important thing is that we find a pace that allows us to be maximally obedient to God.
The ideas of complacent pace, fatal pace, and sacred pace are not new to me. But I think there’s wisdom in assessing our lives through these lenses.
How do we obtain a sacred pace? For those running at a fatal pace, adopt the word “no.” For those running at a complacent pace, embrace the word “yes.” For all of us, regardless of our age or stage in life, may our one desire be to seek the LORD in his temple, gaze upon his beauty, and dwell in his house forever.
May we put our hope in the LORD, both now and forever.
Daniel Seabaugh 
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