Shhh . . . Again!

Today, sometime around mid-morning, the power went out in our neighbourhood. It doesn't happen very often and as usual it didn't last terribly long. But when it did go out, that meant the TV was off, we couldn't listen to the radio, there was no phone ringing, and even a couple of our appliances which were in mid-cycle stopped. We couldn't go online either. So for a short time we had to endure an imposed silence of sorts.

I didn't mind.

Lately, I've been feeling more stressed than usual. The pressures of ministry, home, and finances sometimes have a cumulative effect that ends up being more than the sum of their parts, and that's been true the last little while. And for me, if I'm already on edge or feeling irritable or stressed, noise can easily exacerbate my attitude. And by noise I mean any media. Sometimes my daughter, whom I love dearly, can make unwanted noise too. But, blessedly, during this brief respite from noise, she was with my wife reading stories. It allowed me to sit back and quietly read my Bible. There wasn't much else to do or much else I could do! It almost felt like God was telling me to sit down and shut up. And to sit down and shut up is not far from a description of what Sabbath ought partly to be about.

But quiet has to be self-imposed too. The power usually is there to make the appliances whir, the TV to distract, the laptop to hum, and the phone to ring. So effort is needed to find room for quiet in a world that far too often tempts us to fill every waking moment with noise. Even lately I've noticed a desire in me for more quiet, for more evenings of simply sitting with my Bible, a good book, or even a good magazine. My recent experiences of the sound of silence, however short-lived, have thoroughly reminded me of this. But the challenge I face is whether I will willingly allow silence to penetrate my otherwise noisy life.

All I know is that perhaps having quiet around me is related to having quiet inside of me, that allowing myself the experience of silence will hopefully promote a stillness of spirit, a space into which God can speak and be heard. And this is really the trickier part: stilling the noise on the inside of the heart and mind. Even if there is quiet all around, I can be all noise and distraction underneath. That's one of the reasons I suspect we surround ourselves with noise of whatever kind: to keep the restless sounds of our hearts from being heard. And I suspect that there are times when this may be more or less unconscious. We aren't always aware of our attempts at self-distraction; they become effortless and habitual. It doesn't take a whole lot of motivation to turn the TV on or surf the internet; deliberately placing ourselves in a position to listen to the stillness of God's voice requires discipline. That, unfortunately, is something many of us, pastors included, desperately lack. We fear what we may hear, perhaps?

But God desires to speak to us. Indeed, he has spoken to us ultimately in his Son, the Word. And he speaks to us in the words of Scripture, which tell of the Word. He is present when we pray. In fact, he is present even when we don't pray. He is always present to us; but we are not always present to him. And being present to God is all the more difficult when we allow the inferior "words" of everything else around us drown out the possibility of hearing his voice. Maybe what we need are more power outages!