The Sounds of Silence…Be Still and Know
“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
Psalm 46:10
With the 2021 record Texas snow over, the big meltdown had begun and I had cabin fever. Caution! Caution! my brain said—those brittle bones should not slip and slide. So I stepped out on the back porch to take it all in. The crusty layer on the garden wall, sparkling like jewels in the brilliant sun, creaked and groaned, reluctant to shed its coat of white. The drip-drip-drip off the roof chimed in, running down delicate icicles, down-down-down to oblivion. Birds added their bit of harmony in their clamor for the remaining holly berries bared of snow. All quiet; yet all so alive.
The sounds of silence intrigue. Pete McBride, October 2020 Smithsonian Magazine, agrees: “Silence is the think tank of the soul”…not a vacuum but the “soundscapes that emerge when human noise disappears.” Gordon Hempton, self-described acoustic ecologist, says that noise pollution leads to high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attacks, stress, insomnia; quiet promotes “the regeneration of brain cells in the hippocampus, which is key for learning, memory and emotion.”
As the journal Science reports: the 2020 lockdown “was the longest and most coherent global seismic noise reduction in recorded history.” Add to that the February days spent absent power in much of Texas. The question is: have you taken advantage of the silence? Have I? Have I been still? Have I tuned into the heart of God? Am I more cognizant of just who He is?
Eugene Peterson translates it this way: “Step out of the traffic! Take a long, loving look at me, your High God, above politics, above everything.” It’s the perfect week ladies, with the agony of Gethsemane, the darkness of Golgotha, and the glory of an empty tomb freshly imprinted on our minds, to step aside, out of the traffic.
Be still then, my soul. Be still! Listen for the sounds of God.
“There is hardly ever a complete silence in our soul. God is whispering to us well-nigh incessantly. Whenever the sounds of the world die out in the soul, or sink low, then we hear these whisperings of God.”
—Frederick William Faber, Streams in the Desert, September 18
Nancy P
