Week 3 - Silence and Solitude
I know Fasting and Meditation are good disciples to engage in- and I hope you did engage them. I know they both go hand in hand in many ways, and I hope you have taken some time to experience God in these new ways. Now we move into another important discipline; one that has challenged and shaped many in the church. I want to talk about Solitude and its partner Silence- the disciplines of being alone with God.
Teresa of Avila once said, "Settle yourself in solitude and you will come upon Him in yourself." It is in solitude that we find Jesus for it is where he often found God the Father and encountered Him, I imagine, as the Father was in heaven with his Son before his earthly birth. While we do not have any record of the conversations or actions that occurred in those places (or even how long they took), Jesus sought them out on regular occasions. Jesus regularly went to places where no one could reach him so he could be with God the Father. If he did this, shouldn't we also find time to be alone with God?
However, we live in a culture that does not like being alone. In fact, our culture believes this is a waste of time. We have smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, text messages, and Face time. We have constant internet contact with everyone we could ever want to know that being on our own is simply not possible as it was in the biblical sense. Further, our culture does not value solitude and silence, but Jesus often went to places where he could be alone with his Father.
The poet T.S. Elliot sums us up perfectly when he said, "Where shall the world be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence."[1]
Our task this week is to find time to be alone, to be in solitude and silence with God. Solitude is inner fulfillment, it is not loneliness or forced separation from our society. Solitude reflects an inner peace, an inner focus upon something else. I know people who practice this discipline even in a crowded room- they simply focus upon God and allow everything else around them to melt away so that it becomes a moment of one-on-one fellowship.
Those who practice this discipline are silent as they experience solitude. They do not just refrain from speaking but they refrain from thinking on their own. They submit, if you will, to the silent God who is always walking with us and always offering us His presence. They listen to the sound of God’s voice. There is no questioning God here. We do not ask God as we practice this discipline who we are to pray for and what we are to pray about. We do not recount our day’s events and reflect upon what happened or didn’t happen over the last few hours. We just listen to Him; we are just still, and God comes. The purpose of this discipline is to hear what we are too busy to hear in our own crowded lives.
Try it…. Turn off the radio on the way to work. Do not speak; do not worry about the traffic going to work, going to the doctors, going to drop off the kids at school. Just sit there with God and invite him to fill your mind. Do it at home, take a minute tonight and listen to God’s voice. Don’t work too hard now… we can’t force this discipline. Just be with God as Jesus was with his Father and let him fill your being and tell you want He wants to tell you.
Ecclesiastes says, “To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools” (5.1). Just draw near to God. Leave your agenda on the table in the kitchen and let God have the moment to guide you. This discipline reminds us we are not in control of our lives. God does not wait for our words of prayer to act; God acts because God is God and we serve him. We are reminded in this moment of our rank in the relationship.
In silence and solitude there is no need to talk with God or even argue with God. We just learn here to trust God again. He knows. He cares. He is waiting.
[1] Elizabeth O’Connor, Search for Silence (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1971), p. 132.
Teresa of Avila once said, "Settle yourself in solitude and you will come upon Him in yourself." It is in solitude that we find Jesus for it is where he often found God the Father and encountered Him, I imagine, as the Father was in heaven with his Son before his earthly birth. While we do not have any record of the conversations or actions that occurred in those places (or even how long they took), Jesus sought them out on regular occasions. Jesus regularly went to places where no one could reach him so he could be with God the Father. If he did this, shouldn't we also find time to be alone with God?
However, we live in a culture that does not like being alone. In fact, our culture believes this is a waste of time. We have smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, text messages, and Face time. We have constant internet contact with everyone we could ever want to know that being on our own is simply not possible as it was in the biblical sense. Further, our culture does not value solitude and silence, but Jesus often went to places where he could be alone with his Father.
The poet T.S. Elliot sums us up perfectly when he said, "Where shall the world be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence."[1]
Our task this week is to find time to be alone, to be in solitude and silence with God. Solitude is inner fulfillment, it is not loneliness or forced separation from our society. Solitude reflects an inner peace, an inner focus upon something else. I know people who practice this discipline even in a crowded room- they simply focus upon God and allow everything else around them to melt away so that it becomes a moment of one-on-one fellowship.
Those who practice this discipline are silent as they experience solitude. They do not just refrain from speaking but they refrain from thinking on their own. They submit, if you will, to the silent God who is always walking with us and always offering us His presence. They listen to the sound of God’s voice. There is no questioning God here. We do not ask God as we practice this discipline who we are to pray for and what we are to pray about. We do not recount our day’s events and reflect upon what happened or didn’t happen over the last few hours. We just listen to Him; we are just still, and God comes. The purpose of this discipline is to hear what we are too busy to hear in our own crowded lives.
Try it…. Turn off the radio on the way to work. Do not speak; do not worry about the traffic going to work, going to the doctors, going to drop off the kids at school. Just sit there with God and invite him to fill your mind. Do it at home, take a minute tonight and listen to God’s voice. Don’t work too hard now… we can’t force this discipline. Just be with God as Jesus was with his Father and let him fill your being and tell you want He wants to tell you.
Ecclesiastes says, “To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools” (5.1). Just draw near to God. Leave your agenda on the table in the kitchen and let God have the moment to guide you. This discipline reminds us we are not in control of our lives. God does not wait for our words of prayer to act; God acts because God is God and we serve him. We are reminded in this moment of our rank in the relationship.
In silence and solitude there is no need to talk with God or even argue with God. We just learn here to trust God again. He knows. He cares. He is waiting.
[1] Elizabeth O’Connor, Search for Silence (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1971), p. 132.