Noise

Yesterday I took myself up to Cannock Chase for a walk. What struck me as I walked on the Chase, was how difficult it is to find complete silence in our modern world. Wherever I walked I was aware of the distant hum of traffic, or of a plane flying overhead, or the works of the quarry. Even in the Lake District, when high up on the fells, you can often hear the noise of human activity not far away. Reflecting on this, it made me think about how much noise there is within our lives. When it comes to noise I'm terrible, as soon as I get up in the morning I switch on the radio or the TV, and there are very few occasions when I sit in complete silence. Why is this? Is it because I'm uncomfortable with silence, or don't know how to be still? Psalm 46:10 says, 'Be still, and know that I am God', and in 1 Kings 19 we're told that God did not appear to Elijah in the powerful wind, or the earthquake, or the fire, but in the gentle whisper (1 Kings 19:12). I believe that one of the reasons we don't often feel as though we hear from God is because we're not listening to him. There is too much noise in our lives - worries, anxieties, stress, etc., that we get distracted and fail to hear God's gentle whisper. Learning to be still takes time and effort, it doesn't come naturally to most of us (certainly not me). One of the things that I value so much about Taize worship (www.taize.fr) is the ten minutes of silence that takes place during each service. At the start of the week in Taize, ten minutes seems like an awfully long time, by after a few days those ten minutes of complete silence become an oasis of peace in what is an otherwise noisy world. We only have to turn on the TV, open a newspaper or listen to the radio to realise what a state the world is in, and in part this is due to the fact that people don't listen to one another. What a difference it would make if we learnt the art of listening not only to one another, but also to God.