Silence is Good

The best part of my day, really my absolute favorite time is early in the morning when I meet one on one with the Lord.  The quiet of that hour has become a solace to me as important as food and rest.  Listening to the Word and meditating on what it means for me specifically this day...even this hour...this minute gives me the right motivation to live my day for Christ. I like quiet.  In the quiet I learn to love the hustle and bustle of more people.  In the noise of others, I learn to appreciate my silence.  Just God and me.

“There is an indifferent, or even negative atiitude toward silence which sees in it a disparagement of God’s revelation in the Word.  This is the view which misinterprets silence as a ceremonial gesture, as a mystical desire to get beyond the Word.  This is to miss the essential relationship of silence to the Word.  Silence is the simple stillness of the individual under the Word of God.  We are silent before hearing the Word because our thoughts are already directed to the Word, as a child is quiet when he enters his father’s room.  We are silent after hearing the Word because the Word is still speaking and dwelling within us.  We are silent at the beginning of the day because God should have the first word, and we are silent before going to sleep because the last word also belongs to God.  We keep silence solely for the sake of the Word, and therefore not in order to show disregard for the Word but rather to honor and receive it. 

Silence is nothing else but waiting for God’s Word and coming from God’s Word with a blessing.  But everybody knows that this is something that needs to be practiced and learned, in these days when talkativeness prevails.  real silence, real stillness, really holding one’s tongue comes only as the sober consequence of spiritual stillness.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, pg. 79