Salvific Silence

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Lamentations 3:25–28 "The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on him."

What It Is Speaking to Me

Jean-Paul Sartre said, "If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company." Maybe we don't feel lonely, but we don't necessarily enjoy it either. I think we live in a culture that is completely afraid of being alone. Now I don't mean alone all the time. I mean that we are afraid to be alone with our thoughts for a little bit. An afternoon, an hour, even a few minutes. And to move us even further away from solitude, we have access to all the world's information and entertainment in our pockets all day. So we fill our time with noise. We are scared of silence. Maybe because we don't know what to do with it.

This leads to a generation of people who are uncomfortable experiencing true silence. Not necessarily devoid of all audible noise, but silence in their mind. Nothing is coming in, nothing is distracting them. Alone with their thoughts.

The reality is, there is a freedom found in being alone with our thoughts. Because if you are alone with your thoughts, you actually realize that you aren't alone. God is waiting for you in your silent times. Paul reminds us in the New Testament that where God is, there is freedom.

What if we realized that our phones, our TVs, our radios, our podcasts, our music, and whatever other inputs are actually distractions designed to keep us in bondage? To distract us from the person that really matters? Bob Dylan told us that we all have to serve somebody. Jesus in Matthew 6 said we cannot serve two masters.

I actually enjoy all those things, they are entertaining, but if I can't be alone with myself and God, and I use all those things to keep me distracted from Him, I am serving them. I am a slave to them.

There is freedom in silence. Try turning everything off on a regular basis.

Get alone...and find out how NOT alone you are.

What Is It Saying to You?

Do you struggle with silence?

Why or why not?

What happens when you find solitude?

What Are We Going to Do About It?

Schedule just 10 minutes of genuine silence today without a phone, music, or book. See what happens.