How many of you are multi-tasking right now? Admit it…
You’re waiting in line at Starbucks, listening to the guy next to you talk about his favorite Super Bowl commercial, and scrolling through this post.
Or you have CNN on the TV, while you are eating a piece of toast, feeding your toddler, and clicking back and forth between this and Twitter. Right?
Me too.
I want to do and see and hear ALL OF THE THINGS. Now.
I have a busy mind and a serious case of FOMO.
Like gawkers at an accident, I’m also perversely attracted to what outrageous thing has been said or done in our unsettled (ahem…?) political climate.
The problem with this is that it makes for a lot of noise in my little brain. A lot of different voices vying for attention.
Silence may be the most important discipline you and I need this week.
No, I don’t mean not speaking up for those without a voice. I don’t mean abdicating our responsibility to speak truth.
I mean silence as in turning off the radio. Turning off the TV news. Turning away from Twitter.
I mean making space for God. Leaning in to hear His whispers instead of the shouts of the world.
The other day I was walking around Lake of the Isles at an arctic 5 degrees. I had been listening to a podcast on my phone, but all of a sudden it stopped – frozen – and I was left with a lot of white space.
The world around me was snowy and silent. The clatter in my ears was stilled.
With this space, I found myself noticing the beauty of creation and thanking God.
Several who are experiencing injustice around the world came to mind and I prayed for them.
A new idea emerged.
The Holy Spirit prompted me to reexamine how I’m viewing a relationship.
God spoke into the silence.
Some of you reading this may be genuine candle-lighting, silence-seeking contemplatives. Bless you. That would not be me.
But my frozen phone made me think about the importance of choosing this as a discipline more often. So yesterday my Sabbath included no radio, no news, no Twitter.
Less static, more stillness.
What if, this week, we set aside time to turn off the noise, and like Samuel, said, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”?
