Have you ever noticed that we live in a loud world? It seems that we can’t go anywhere these days without being bombarded by noise. Most people can’t even ride in their cars in silence. We have cell phones, computers, IPODs, MP3 players, DVD players in our cars, anything to fill the silence. We have music in elevators because you can’t ride them in silence with strangers…it’s just too weird.

So often people don’t ever even turn off the noise. More and more people are saying that they have to fall asleep to noise - the TV stays on, or they listen to music. My favorite are those little sound machines that play sounds while you fall asleep. You can listen to the ocean, or birds chirping, or you can listen to white noise. Yes, white noise. The sound of static. Do we hate silence that much? It makes me start to think about why we feel the need to constantly fill the silence. Perhaps it’s because we don’t know what to do in silence. Have you ever tried to sit in silence for maybe a minute? Literally, one minute? It will feel like an extremely long minute, I guarantee you! We are that unaccustomed to silence.

But I feel like we need to remember something. When Elijah goes to Mount Horeb seeking the Lord, he asks to see God. God meets Elijah there and says that He will pass by. Then three things happen - there was a great fire, a great earthquake, and a great wind. But the Lord was not in any of those things. Instead, we read in 1 Kings 19:12 that in the ensuing silence Elijah heard the whisper of the Lord. Wow. In the silence. Not in the mighty, powerful, loud acts of nature; but in the still, small voice. So I ask again, why don’t we like silence? Could it be that we’re a little scared of what we might hear? Of whatever conviction we might feel? Is this our own attempts at hiding from God? Sometimes I wonder.

I know that it is hard for me to sit in silence. Life demands my attention. People demand my attention. My own thought process demands my attention. Maybe that is why silence has come to be considered a spiritual discipline: because now, more than ever, we have to make a conscious effort to turn off the noise. That’s my challenge for this week - to turn off the noise. I might be surprised at what I hear!

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 7:20 pm and is filed under Kristy's Korner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.