Hush...

There is something to be said about quiet.

(and yes, this is truly coming from me.)

I've never been known to be the quiet type. In a 6^th grade play, each speaking child was equipped with a microphone except for me. The strange thing is that nobody in the audience seemed to notice. Even still, I have had multitudes of friends and family members “inform” me that the volume of my communication tends to rise when I get excited. Oh, and I don't do well around sleeping babies.

However, I have been condemned to a few days of silence by a sinus infection gone awry. My mom told me last night that me being quiet was “creepy” and it seemed like I was “invaded” by someone else. She then turned up her music.

Silence is inconvenient. I was unable to converse with friends at church yesterday, I couldn't get involved in class discussions today, and I will be unable to speak for my presentation at an Undergraduate Research Symposium tomorrow.

But, there is something to be said about quiet.

Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind. (Ecclesiastes 4:6)

I tend to keep my hands full of toil—my plate of life piled high. With all of my hustling about, I often forget to be still. To wait and listen to God speak.

These past few days, I've re-noticed a logical truth: a soft sound is easier heard when surrounded by silence rather than noise. When I'm in a noisy context, such as a room filled with people or blaring music, my feeble whispers are no greater than mouthing lips. But late at night, when the rest of the world has gone to sleep and even the cicadas are at rest, a dear friend can hear my every word.

1 Kings 19:11-13 – God was not in the great wind, earthquake, or fire... but in the low whisper. (This is the condensed summary—go read it for yourself!)

If my whisper of a voice can't be heard in the noise, maybe that's why it's often hard for us to hear God. We keep our hands full of toil and our lives full of noise, when God asks us to go away in the silence to be with Him. Jesus even set this example for us by rising before everyone else and going off alone to pray. He even instructs us to do the same:

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:6)

So what do you think? Will you be quiet with me?

Because there is something to be said about quiet.