Silence

As I sat out on the back patio this evening, I took some time to do nothing. The wind was calm, the birds were out, the sun was setting, and I just vegged out for a few minutes.

That’s hard to do…you know? We don’t take well to doing nothing. If nothing else, our minds race with things that remain undone (then we begin to feel guilty for doing nothing) or things that we’ll have to do tomorrow, or whatever else. We just don’t take well to doing nothing.

In the Old Testament, it is said that God says, “Be still and know that I am the Lord.” In another place, the prophet says, “The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him.” Ecclesiastes says there’s “A time to keep silence and a time to speak.” I don’t know how well we do the silence thing. I do know that I seem to have to have a television, radio, or something making noise most of the time. Why, I don’t know.

When things are quiet, I know it. I know it because the loudest thing I can hear is the constant ringing in my ears. When there’s other noise around, it sort of masks that noise, but when it’s not there, the ringing becomes very, very noticeable. Maybe that is one reason why I like to have external noise. Maybe it’s something else.

Pat will be home soon. I hope the evening is nice enough we can enjoy the patio together. I am resisting with all my effort the putting of a TV or radio on the patio. I don’t want to do that, but some base sense tells me that I need to do that. We need silence. We need to take some time and just watch and listen. Often, when we do, we hear God speaking in that still, small voice.