The Deafening Roar of Silence

I am an extrovert. Take away human contact for too long and I quickly cease to function well. My energy and creativity drop and the most mundane tasks become difficult. 

However, in more recent years I have also come to value time alone; time with peace and quiet. 

Fortunately, I live somewhere I get plenty of that, even though noise and people are never far away. But there are those times when I just love to decrease the sensory input. At those times, even music can be an intrusion.

Of course, not everyone is like this. I know many who rarely enjoy a really quiet environment. There are those who, to my amazement, love to have the tv or radio running in the background from morning to night. The idea of not having noise is isolating at best, for them.

For me, though, heading up to the mountains this week for a day of cross-country skiing was one of those welcome time outs. As we left the resort and headed up the trail, all noise of people, vehicles and generators drifted away behind us. Although there were the occasional other skiers, they quickly disappeared and we were on our own again. Eventually, we became aware that the only sound apart from ourselves was the thump and crash of ice and snow falling off the trees.

At one point, we stopped for a snack and a bit of a rest and just listened to the silence. Complete and utter silence. Not even the sound of birds. You don't realise how noisy life is until you are in a space where there is absolute silence. It was beautiful. I longed to just stay there, and if it weren't for the cold and the need to ski back to the car park, I could have quite easily set up camp and remained indefinitely.

As we stood and quietened even our breathing, listening to the sound of silence, the sound of nothing, I became aware of noise that wasn't noise. The words that came to mind were 'the thunder and roar of God'. I am not sure how to really describe it, whether it was just the awareness of His majesty in the beauty of His creation, or the fact that as all other distractions were stripped away, His sovereignty was somehow obvious - we were in the presence of royalty. It was like the majestic music from a movie, or even the reverberating sound check in the cinema. And yet, physically it was silent. It was one of those moments where I would have liked to build a little memorial, like the piles of rocks the Israelites left at places of encounter with God. Like a sign, "God was here".

We had been discussing the whole creation idea earlier in the day, what it was like for God to create from nothing, to dream up the ideas, the seeds of what it would all look like. My husband shared the thought that creation was an expression of God, it is a reflection of who He is, but more than that, He is within and through it. He permeates creation. He is the life blood that pulsates through it all. Perhaps this was part of the thunder and roar. Hearing His heartbeat in His creation. 

Sometimes we can hate the silence because of what we cannot silence - the voices of despair, of pain, of loneliness, of hunger, of anger or bitterness that scream out at us if we don't have enough other distractions. We can fill up our lives with other stuff so we don't have to deal with that which is too hard. Perhaps we don't even realise we are doing it, until silence comes crashing in on us. And for some, silence is to be feared, because we don't want to face that which dwells within. 

And yet, I want to promise, to give a commitment that what we fear, what we dislike so much can be exactly what we need. Like Elijah hiding in the cave (see 1 Kings 19:11-14), in pain and despair, longing for God to speak, make it all right - first there was mighty, loud wind; then an earthquake, then fire, before the gentleness and stillness of God came upon him. He wanted God to act strongly, to be loud and present and forceful, and yet God came in silence, in stillness, because this is what Elijah actually needed.

So it is with us. While we want to keep running from the 'demons' that chase us down, that haunt us, we stay exhausted; we are never free, never rested. We remain trapped in the lie that these things have power over us; that living in fear is the only safe way to live. It is only as we stop and wait on God, that His stillness, peace and gentleness can start to infiltrate us with His answers, His rest for us, and His freedom. It is in this place that we start to find what really defines us - is it Him or the world, Him or our circumstances? It is only when we cease striving to deafen the silence, we discover the space to find the One who truly defines us.