Our society is noisy. Something is producing sound all the time. A restaurant I walk past at 6 a.m. has speakers broadcasting music even though it won’t be open for five hours. All of this noisiness  can be a problem to spiritual life. There is no place for silence.

Last week I mentioned the movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” One of the most touching scenes in movie happens in a Chinese restaurant where Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers asks the journalist he’s dining with to take a minute of silence to consider the people who’ve loved him into being. For the next minute they sit in silence while the camera pans around the restaurant. Those sixty seconds have to be one of the most spiritual moments ever recorded on film.

The prophet Elijah fled for his life to a cave on Mount Horeb. There he encounters the Lord, not in wind or earthquake or fire, but in the sound of sheer silence. We need silence so that we can be with the Lord. I don’t mean that we need to be quiet so we can hear the words of the Lord, but rather that the Lord is present even in silence. It is essential that our prayer lives embrace silence. We often think of prayer as expressing our thoughts to God or maybe of turning over a reading from Scripture. Sometimes we ought to stop doing anything and just be with God. That’s the value of silence.

I hope you will find the silence to be with God.

Read Psalm 62:1-2 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne