Silence is Golden
February 27, 2010
Some time ago, I read a study about how difficult it is for nature shows to find more than one hour of uninterrupted natural sound. Bruce Rutkoski, nicknamed Natureguy, writes the following at http://www.natureguystudio.com/bio.html:
Today, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find places that are free of human made noise, where good recordings can be made…I seek out remote locations to avoid noise from motorcycles, cars, trucks, trains, oil/gas rigs, and everything else no one wants to hear in a nature sound CD. However, air traffic recognizes no boundaries and requires considerable editing. It may require 2-3 years of accumulated recordings to produce a single album.
Our world is getting increasingly noisier and louder! Noise has a serious impact on our bodies and minds. Take a look at section on “Stress and Noise” at www.fi.edu/learn/brain/stress.html. You’ll be astounded at the health impacts noise has on us.
With this reality in mind, let’s take a look at what King David wrote in Psalm 62:1—“For God alone my soul waits in silence.” How difficult it is for us to echo these words—but how necessary it is for us to be able to do so!
I’m not sure why we surround ourselves with so much noise; perhaps it’s simply out of habit…when we walk into a silent room, it may be our custom to turn on the radio or the television or to make a phone call. Or perhaps it’s a way to hide from silence, in which we might find ourselves faced with uncomfortable thoughts or even memories. It might be that there are many reasons why we surround ourselves with noise of some type.
But how important is it to make space in our days to sit in silence! It is no secret that noise distracts us. In the spiritual formation workbook, Connecting with God, the authors write, “God uses silence to prepare us for ministry, to speak to us. Yet most of us set aside embarrassingly little time to stop talking about it and actually be quiet with God…being so trapped in the everyday responsibilities of life that we don’t feel like we can ‘waste’ time being silent before God can be just as desperate a situation. Without periods of silence, our souls shrivel up and die…we come face-to-face with spiritual atrophy when our lives are filled with constant noise from which there is no respite.”
How about you? Does this resonate with you? If you have to admit, embarrassingly so, that you set aside little or no time to be quiet with God, how do you plan to address this?
At first, practicing solitude or silence before God can feel very awkward and even uncomfortable. There can be so much noise in our own minds that even when there isn’t any outside noise, we are still not silent!
Have you had that experience? I have! If this is your experience, I encourage you to keep reaching for silence until your mind quiets and you can experience solitude, true solitude. This is not so that you can “empty your mind,” but so that God can inhabit your thoughts while all that strives to crowd Him out is pushed aside. Colossians 3:2 encourages us to “set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth.” The more you set the intention to make time in your day to do this, the easier it will be to come to that point of silence and the sooner in your practice you will experience that silence. I’d love to hear your experiences here as you seek God in solitude…how is it going and how are you experiencing God in your practice?
