There is a game children play where they are quiet for a specified length of time. The object of the game is to listen through the quietness to see which child can count the most noises – the sound of a car horn, the siren of a fire truck in the distance, a neighbor’s dog barking, birds chirping in a tree outside the window, or other sounds. When you are trying to count the noises you hear, the list can become quite impressive.
Though listening through the quiet is probably a game originated by an exhausted mother attempting to have a few minutes rest from the duties of caring for her children, it is not just a children’s game. God also calls for us to listen through the stillness: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10 KJV).
The first thing that many of us do when we get up in the morning is to turn on the television. Even if we pay little or no attention to it, we surround ourselves with its noise. The rackets of the city give us no respite. We are immersed in raucous sound from morning until night. Even the night is no longer quiet.
The Psalmist was both right and wise when he said that we should cease all our endless going places and doing things and, in the silence, just listen. The familiar hymn, “Take time to be holy/Speak oft with thy Lord/Abide in Him always/And feed on His Word” captures a tremendous truth. If we are to hear what the Lord has to say, we must go into the silence and listen.
When the prophet Elijah went down into the Sinai Peninsula to hide from Queen Jezebel’s threat, a mighty wind shattered the rocks around him, an earthquake shook the earth, and this was followed by the sharp sound of lightning. God’s voice was not in the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire. Following these things came a period of silence, and then came a gentle whisper. It was not until the noise ceased and the silence grabbed his attention that Elijah heard “the still small voice of God” (Il Kings 19:12).
The Old Testament character Job said, “There was silence, and I heard a voice” (Job 4:16 KJV). The culture in which we live bids us fill our days and hours with busyness. Jesus during His ministry on earth was also busy, but the nature of His activities and the authority of His teaching came from the periodic long silences to which He disciplined Himself.
It is in times of silence that we can best find life’s meaning? In our quiet moments of prayer God’s voice can be heard, and the road we are to travel can be made known to us. William Gladstone declared: “Statesmanship is finding out where God Almighty is going in the next seventy-five years, and then go in that direction.” Our challenge is to escape the noise and find the silent place where God is waiting to speak.
Abraham Lincoln, crying out for wisdom during a crucial time in the history of our nation said, “I have had so many evidences of God’s direction, so many instances when I have been controlled by some other power than my own will, that I cannot doubt that this power comes from God.” It was during his silent moments of meditation that Lincoln found the strength he needed to lead our nation.
It was through the struggling, yet quiet, hours of Gethsemane that Jesus was given the strength to face the horrors of the Cross. It is in times of silence that the deepest things of eternity are interpreted. It is in the silence that accompanies sorrow that the comfort to cope with our sadness is discovered and appropriated. It is in the silence of despair that hope is born again and life is made able to lift up its head.
Go into the stillness and listen. Silence is for hearing.
The Paper Pulpit 
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