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| Ancient Korazin, in Israel |
When I go out to pray it's often at our state park on Lake Erie. The colder the weather is, the fewer people are there. It's quiet, except for the sound wind, lake waves, and birds.
Silence.
I open my journal, ready to write what I hear God saying to me. I open my Bible to whatever place I'm at.
I speak to God. I listen. In the silence I hear God speaking to me. I write it down.
This silence is a gift to me. In silence I hear better. I live in a world that values sound and noise more than their absence. Few people wear earbuds for the sake of listening to nothing.
I shut the competing noise of this world out so as to hear The Voice within.
“There is a wonderful power of clarification, purification and concentration upon the essential thing in being quiet,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes. “Silence before the Word leads to right hearing and thus also to right speaking of the Word of God at the right time. Much that is unnecessary remains unsaid. But the essential and the helpful thing can be said in a few words.” (In Ruth Haley Barton, Pursuing God's Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups, p. 41)
Ultimately, silence is a condition of a human heart uncluttered by other voices.
Pray in the silence today.
