Enter the Silence

“Silence is the hard to reach place that takes us to places hard to reach without it.”

Loren Thornburg

For many of us there is not a shortage of busyness and noise. Those things are easy to come by and we are comfortable with them.  It’s the silence that is hard to find and often hard to sit in and remain there.  It doesn’t usually happen on it’s own.  We have to be intentional to make space fork it.  We have to schedule it in, close our door, and refuse to let distractions steal us away from the silence that we need.  For it is in silence that we hear truth.  It is in silence that we can take a step back and see what’s really going on around us and in us.  It is in silence that we remember what’s important.  Without silence we miss seeing, hearing and remembering.  And without those things we will get lost; lost in the busyness, lost in the noise, and lost in the chaos of life.   Reach for silence even when it’s hard.  It’s worth the reach.  

“When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself.  Enter the silence.  Bow in prayer.  Don’t ask questions: Wait for hope to appear. Don’t run from trouble.  Take it full-face.  The “worst” is never the worst.  Why? Because the Master won’t ever walk out and fail to return.”

Lamentations 3:28-31 Message

It sounds so simple: When things get hard, go be quiet before God and enter the silence with Him.  Yet, it’s far from easy for me.  Somehow that is the last thing I want when life is heavy.  I want something else.  I want something to hear, something to hold, something I can see.  So I look for that in music, books, friends, TV, but it’s not there. Although God often uses all of those things in my life, when He is calling me to enter the silence they just can’t meet me there.   For in these times I leave those places, although thankful for the break from the heaviness, still searching.  Eventually when I find myself entering the silent spaces with my Faithful Creator I find hope.  It takes waiting, it takes wrestling, it takes faith, but it is there I am found.  I was lost in the noise until I entered the silence on which I hear God speak.  I see my God be faithful again.  It really wasn’t the worst like I thought it was, but it was the thing that showed me once again what is really true: God finds me in those places and never stops finding me.  Silence may be hard to find but it’s where we are found.