1/22/2006

INTO THE SILENCE

There has been a lot of noise in my life lately. Actually, I think it has been this way for a little longer than lately. It seems that life and all of its rotation have grabbed my attention and my ears.

That's okay, silence is always only a second away. These last few days I have gone back to silence, and you know what? I actually think I have been hearing God's gentle voice again. The thing that troubles me the most is that it is so easy for me to forget that my ears don't work all that well when I fill them with nothing but the noise of a rotating life. God can get away with that, I cannot.

I don't know what it is about me, and maybe I am the only one who is like this (I wouldn't know), but it just seems like sometimes I forget how I hear God best. For me, it's silence, simple aloneness and silence. I hear Him at other times, too, but nothing seems to work better for me than silence.

That is why I stopped the rotation of life several times this weekend, that...and silence gives me rest like nothing else, too. Looking in all the usual places to realize a fullness of the discovery I wrote about the other day got me no where.

I am glad that silence isn't one of those usual places. I am glad that silence makes me face myself, and accept myself. But I didn't learn that from a book, and I didn't read it in the bible. In fact, I have always been drawn to periods of silence, and I was never able to understand why. Now, however, I think I know part of the reason. I think it's because I find God most easily in the silence.

Maybe silence doesn't work for you, as I said, I wouldn't know. But it sure does work for me. And all I am going to say is, thanks Dad, for helping me to remember that. Thanks, Dad, for listening to me, for calming me and leading me.

Thanks, Dad, for also being God. Thanks for being big enough to know everything, and small enough to care.

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