“Be still and I know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
“That night there were shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flock at night.” (Luke 2:8)
“Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray.” (Mark 1:35)
A recent Bible study I was using said this: “Silence heals. Like cool water to a parched and depleted soul, we don’t even realize how much we need silence. God tells us to quiet ourselves, to cultivate a gentle and quiet spirit, and to make it our ambition to lead a quiet life. Doing so gives us rest.”
Silence and solitude, two of the ancient church disciplines has certainly been marginalized, even lost, in our frenetic loud society we’ve created since the 1970s. I too love the music, some of the creative stories on TV, and the ability to see activities like sports while not actually being there. But somehow, we have actually harmed ourselves and our culture.
It doesn’t take too much looking around, listening or reading comment threads or viewing social media to see the truth in this. While we may also long for greater civility in the country, perhaps the starting point for that is becoming more eager to find silence. As the devotional study said, “Silence is a discipline we must deliberately choose to practice in this busy, noisy world.”
As we head closer to Christmas, when a silent group of laborers had their night interrupted by a single clear voice–imagine how tough it might have been for the angel to get the message through if every shepherd was rocking out to their own music on head-phones–determine to work in more silence into your schedule. This could be sitting silently with a cup of tea or coffee, on a walk (nothing better than a walk through the woods or a dense park in silence), or even just on your drive to work, turning off the music or news and being still.
Give your own soul a gift this Christmas; make time for solitude and silence. In that, you might too hear the still soft voice of an angel, a voice of love and peace.