The sound of silence

Recently I felt God prompt me about cultivating stillness amidst the silliness of busyness. This links with the theme of ‘soaking’ we have for this year which, if I’m honest, has ebbed and flowed at various points so I’m grateful for the opportunity to respond more fully to God’s word during this season of lent.

Ah, the sound of silence … well, not quite. Much of life seems non-conducive to stillness - trips to organise, deadlines to meet, papers to prepare, meetings to manage, rehearsals for a gig on Saturday night, preparations to preach on Sunday morning, three lively children, mmm not exactly tranquil! Maybe its just been a normal week and I’ve simply been more aware of the swirl of daily activity and of running just to stand still.

Amidst the silliness I’ve started to stop and have taken time to wander along willow walk, rest by the river and generally started to turn down the volume of my personal soundtrack which all too easily blocks out heaven’s song and tune in to God’s still small voice. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said ‘let none expect from silence anything but a direct encounter with the Word of God’. I’m finding initially that the quietness is in a way disquieting as silence makes room for God to highlight patterns in life which need to change, exposes sin which needs to be confronted and released from and brings insight into who I really am.

Psalm 46 continues to be on my mind, amidst much shifting and shaking in our world God calls us to ‘be still and know that I am God, I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth’. We live in a world which is dying for the rest of God and I have started to realise that stillness is really about trusting in God’s greater plans rather than busily working out our own schemes and in so doing recognising who really is God. Its about being still enough to think anew, to set our sights on the right horizon and hear him whisper words of life. Walter Lavage Sandor called solitude ‘an audience chamber with God’ and it is this I continue to seek in stillness.