This week, I wanted to offer a short reflection on silence and how it’s been affecting my life. This writing is based upon some thoughts I shared at a home group gathering this last week for my local church.
I want you to consider briefly when, or if, you allow silence to inhabit your life. For some people, silence is a frightening thing and as such we must always have some noise, constantly, in life. We have the radio on while we commute. When we pray, we have background music on. When we exercise or clean the house we listen to a podcast or audio book. Truthfully, silence is something that many people try and avoid.
Why? Well, because when we’re silent some of what is inside of us comes bubbling up to the surface and we are forced to look at things we usually try to push aside. The conversation where we said something we shouldn’t have said and we’re still kicking ourselves. The loss of a loved one. The thing that we should be doing instead of what we’re doing right now. The hurtful thing that someone said to us. The poor state of our marriage, or a friendship that just ended. The diagnosis from the doctor that we wish we could unhear. The burden of family members who need help. Any number of things can come to mind and frequently they’re negative. Hence, we avoid silence.
I like to think of silence almost as a car sitting and idling. If an engine is finely tuned and firing on all cylinders, one of the ways you know this is that it has a good, clean, smooth idle. You can sit at a stoplight and not even know your car is running. It’s not vibrating out of control because it’s idling too low and likewise the engine isn’t revving because the idle is too high. It’s calm and right where it’s supposed to be. After having to replace spark plugs in our family car two weeks ago, I have some experience with rough idles (and also a misfiring engine!) When people stop, at idle, and enjoy silence, we find out just where our spiritual idle has been and if we’re properly tuned, as it were.
In Psalm 19, David writes in reflection of God’s creation (19:1-6), God’s law (19:7-11), and prays for God’s work on him (19:12-13). In essence, David is showing us where his idle is at. In a moment of silence, David is brought to worship, and a prayerful reflection. He then concludes with a powerful and truly beautiful prayer in verse 14,
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”
David wants not only the outward to be right, but the inward. He’s not just focusing on his words that people can hear, but the very meditation of his heart that only God hears. Interestingly enough, the Hebrew word for “meditation” in this passage can also refer to a musical melody.[1] David might play the lyre beautifully for others, but only God can hear the lyre that is within his heart. Only God knows what David dwells on. The things that come to mind in silence that he would repeat to himself over and over as he was out with the sheep. We do know from 2 Samuel 11 that David was also human, and he didn’t always get it right either. He’s like us.
A helpful word for me when I think of the idea of meditation is “ruminating.” Ruminating has the sense of thinking deeply, but it actually originates from an animal chewing the cud. Some animals have a seemingly unusual, God-given process, where they re-chew partially digested food. They are known as ruminants, animals that ruminate (chew the cud.) Now, while people thankfully don’t have to regurgitate their food, we do have a tendency to regurgitate thoughts and chew on them in our minds for extended periods of time. What our hearts are truly tuned to comes out most, I believe, in silence.
For David, the meditation of his heart from this psalm is wonderful. He’s reflecting on God’s glory in the creation with the sun, moon, and stars. He’s reflecting on God’s commandments and how they benefit us. David even prays for God to keep him from hidden faults that he might not even be aware of (19:12-13). In summary, his prayer is that the lyre within his heart would play a beautiful melody for God inwardly just as his fingers would have played outwardly.
I want us to consider what the meditation of our hearts is like. When silence comes, what bubbles to the surface? Praise of God or personal hurts? Thanksgiving, or complaining? Thoughtful reflection, or unhealthy rumination. Is our idle rough? Are we perhaps dwelling on ungodly thoughts that cause our spiritual engines to not fire on all cylinders?
The Apostle Paul once described this in terms of how we ought to think in Philippians 4:8,
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
So, I want to challenge you. This next week, find time to enjoy (or at least try to enjoy!) some silence. Whether it’s early in the morning, or late at night. If it’s on the commute to work, or when the kids are taking a nap. If it’s on a run, or on your lunch break. Recently, I’ve been in the midst of marathon training, and this means I’m going out for runs that are 2.5-3 hours long on Saturday mornings. I’m not disciplined enough to enjoy that much time in silence at this point. But I’ve been trying to intentionally take 30-45 minutes of those runs in (almost) silence, just hearing the sound of my shoes on the gravel and the birds singing God’s praise. It’s been an interesting time of reflection that has brought out areas I need to work on and on other days caused me to rejoice in praise to God for His gifts to me.
Take some time in silence and reflection and see what comes to the surface and what that might mean. Perhaps worship in response to God’s glory in creation needs to give you a tune-up. Perhaps God’s Word needs to give you a tune-up. Or perhaps your spiritual engine is firing on all cylinders, and you can just praise and thank God in response. I would also encourage you to read the whole of Psalm 19. Truly, it’s a beautiful psalm.
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”
[1] Francis Brown, Samuel Rolles Driver, and Charles Augustus Briggs, Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 212.
This is a wonderful reminder and encouragement.
I often do everything I can to avoid silence. In silence, the voices of my past come to haunt me, ptsd flashback replay over and over, grief casts a shadow with its grey clouds, etc.
But I am slowly learning how to be silent; and to invite God into the silence.