Silence

I feel very strange tonight. I am home alone for the night, and I can’t remember the last time I had a house with no hubby or kids in it for 24 hours.

After I dropped the kids off at their sleepover, I began to think of all the activities I could accomplish in just one night... plan out our summer, get ahead on my schoolwork, pray, read, the list was extensive and I was excited. However, I wasn't in the house long when something odd captured my attention- silence! This silence made me aware of neighbors chatting, car doors closing, children playing in the street, a baby crying- I didn't even know there was a baby that tiny in the neighborhood! Honestly, I was astonished at all the outside life my ears were detecting. I was reminded of standing in the desert at nighttime, looking up at the incredible display of stars and being surrounded by the complete absence of sound yet experiencing the overpowering awareness of a universe beyond mine. No experience compares to that, witnessing such grandeur encased in such stillness naturally causes worship to arise in one's heart.

Tonight my world is silent, yet there is an active world right outside my doorstep that I seldom notice. I realize that our personal lives are so noisy, so polluted with constant chatter, media, music, phones, alarms and a million other distractions that our ability to perceive what is outside our immediate universe is severely handicapped. We would not hear God if He were screaming at us, and He rarely screams at anyone. We need more of what He says, "Be still and know that I am God." Maybe that explains why He takes us into the desert at times, it is where we can hear Him best if we are not afraid of the silence.