Verse of the Day for March 22

Zechariah has been shown a series of visions, most of them full of movement — men with measuring lines, angels going out, cities without walls. The chapter ends by stopping all of it.

Be silent, O all flesh, before the Lord: for he is raised up out of his holy habitation.

The reason given for the silence is not reverence in the abstract. It is that God has stood up and is on the move.

There is a kind of quiet that comes over a room when someone with authority rises. Nobody organises it; the talking simply stops.

O all flesh widens it beyond Israel. The instruction is issued to everybody, which means it does not depend on the hearer's beliefs.

And it lands at the end of a chapter about God coming to dwell in the middle of his people. The silence is not distance. It is what happens when someone that significant enters the room you are in.

Reverence is not a mood you generate. It is a response to noticing who is present.

Before you ask for anything today, sit still for one minute on the grounds that He has stood up.