Being in the sales arena, on many days my car is my office. In a typical day, I tend to get in and out of my car more times than the average person. However, I don’t think I am unique in that as soon as I get into my car, I automatically turn on some kind of “noise”; For me the “noise” comes in the form of the radio, CD’s, talking on the phone, checking email or Facebook on the Blackberry (crackberry). Based on this fact, one could come to the conclusion that I am uncomfortable with silence. Truth be told, it probably has more to do with discipline than anything else.
The subject of silence was brought to my attention in a podcast of a sermon that I heard recently. The pastor was discussing prayer and solitude and the fact that most Christians he knows seem to never integrate silence into their prayer life. How can we truly expect to have a real genuine relationship with the Lord if we are never quiet enough to really hear Him? Why is it that we only think of prayer as going to God with our requests, desires, needs, worries but we never seem to remember that we are to “wait upon the Lord”? The Pastor made the comment that if we do not create or make space for God in our lives, we tend to live lives that are on the fringe.
Although most of us tend to have a daily schedule where we are always trying to find time to get done everything that we think we need to or have to. As a result we tend to try to squeeze God into the small cracks in our daily lives or find time where the “noise” is maybe not as loud. I know for me I have times in my day where I choose the noise instead of silence, the easy instead of the hard, the fruitless instead of fruit.
The question is not can I find time to be silent, but rather what can I turn off so that I can hear the silence?
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"The subject silence was brought to my attention in a podcast..." you're aware of the irony, right?
The question of both silence and creating space for God is one that the Cistercian Order has well balanced. They are silent but take no vow of silence; their order is such that the spend a third of their day in prayer and meditation(the other 2/3s in sleep and work.
I find I have the same problem, squeezing God into the cracks of my life. My problem is that it is hard to categorize "Time with God" as a task or goal and come up with a meaningful sense of "I accomplished it." Too much addicted to checking things off my list, perhaps.
It probably also points to the fact that we have bought into the myth that we can do everything. Funny that this is often potrayed as a problem for women, but is probably just as great a problem for men
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