Silence

Walking to get the church’s mail today, listening to music on my Zune, I began to think about what my day had looked like. I got up, and turned on the music on my computer. Then I went downstairs to the office and listened to air1 radio online. At lunch I watched TV on my computer, and then went back to listening to music. I only stopped listening to plug in my Zune and start back up with music.

It struck me as I was planning my “quiet time” that my entire day, and almost every day, has been spent with constant noise. I surround myself with music, shows, talking, noise. And even when those things are silent I still have the hum of electronics, the noise of the street, people coming by, washing machines, and dishwashers. I think most of us live like that.

We don’t even have silence if we want it, and most of the time we don’t want it. We seek out anything to distract us from silence and fill the void. But here’s the thing, we usually hear God the best when we still ourselves and listen into the silence for the Holy Spirit’s small voice. But when was the last time living in the city any of us have gotten true silence?

The people in the Bible lived before iPods and electronics. They didn’t have cars and lived outside of cities for the most part. They could go outside and within a few minutes could get true silence. In the desert they did not even have the rustling of trees or the calls of animals. And it was to these deserts that the early Christians retreated to when they wanted to hear from God.

True silence. We run from that, don’t we? If there is quiet in our lives we will do almost anything to fill it with noise. Even with God, we try to fill any silence with our own conversations. We fear silence, are terrified of it, but historically that true silence is where we hear God the best, removed from all distractions.

Can we face that sort of terror? Can we face silence to hear God? Do we even care enough to try? It goes against so much of how we live our lives, how our lives are built. But for centuries that is how people have heard God the best, in silence. Perhaps we have changed enough that silence is no longer the primary way we hear God, but it certainly is an important one.