Pursuing Silence
As I sit and type this post, I quietly listen to my surroundings. The air conditioning unit hums in the background. The trickling of water in my fish tank gently combats the hum. Perhaps as you read this post, there’s music playing in the room you’re in, or someone is trying to have a conversation with you from another room—or perhaps you’re cold-blooded enough to read this while outside, and you can hear cars zooming by one at a time.
Sound plays a fascinating role in life. We have had sound so long and so pervasively that we become concerned when we hear nothing. We’ve all watched a movie or TV show and heard the phrase “it’s quiet… too quiet….” At that moment, we’ve known that a major event in the plot is about to take place. Sound can be necessary and helpful, though. If I couldn’t hear one of my kids crying, then I’m not sure how I would help.
While sound can be a blessing, I do wonder if our need for and reliance on sound has hindered us. Sound keeps us moving regardless of whether or not we need to stop. Our culture has not only changed drastically over the last couple of decades, but the rate of change is perhaps higher than it has ever been.
Richard Foster is a wise man who was WAY ahead of this curve in 1978 when he wrote the classic Celebration of Discipline. If you read Mosaic blogs, then you’ve likely read this book. He says that “our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in our muchness and our manyness, he will rest satisfied” (p. 13). Feel free to disagree, but I believe that life has only gotten faster and busier since 1978.
“Busy” is simply a word we have begun using that allows us to justify our priorities. When we ask people in a chance meeting how they are doing, “busy” or something along those lines is a regular response we hear and oftentimes even give to others. We seem to feel a deep need to be busy. Important people are busy. Busy people get things done. People who get things done are successful and, if nothing else, keep the world spinning.
However, when I look at so many stories in scripture, I find something unique, especially when God audibly speaks to an individual: it’s quiet. If you read the story of the boy Samuel hearing God in the temple (1 Samuel 3) or of Elijah on Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19), there’s a good bit of evidence that the voice of God might not actually be the loud, deep, somber voice of Morgan Freeman (as hard as that is to believe).
In his book Hearing God (1984), the late, great Dallas Willard referred to these cases as the “small, still voice of God” (p. 115). One of the points that he tries to get across in this book is that sometimes we don’t hear God’s voice when He speaks to us because we are being too loud and/or surrounding ourselves with noise. One could argue that Samuel and Elijah heard the voice of God for a variety of reasons, but I think one reason for both was that they were both silent and therefore heard the “small, still voice of God.”
While we might think that spending time in silence is a simple, unproductive, or maybe even dumb prescription to encountering the presence of God, I would also invite you to consider just how difficult it is. Think about how far you might have to go out of your way to turn off any and all noisemakers, to shut out anyone and everyone, and to turn off all communication devices and simply be silent before the Maker of the heavens and the earth. If you are actually able to accomplish this, then try and stay there in that space for five, ten, or fifteen minutes. The task might be harder than you think.
Just because you are silent doesn’t mean that God will immediately speak. More than likely, He won’t—or perhaps not in a way you can hear. That’s not the point. The point is about more than hearing God. It’s also about surrender to God. Silence and stillness show God that we are fully present to Him as opposed to other people or our tasks and activities. We show God that He alone is what truly matters, and if He chooses to speak, then like Samuel, His servants are listening. However, if God chooses not to speak in that space and time, then perhaps God just needed some quality time with His child in whom He is well pleased. Maybe that’s why Jesus was going off on mountainsides to be alone so often.
