You can find the video here: https://www.facebook.com/RichlandNaz/videos/2587648524816271/
There is a lot of sound going on around us on a daily basis. Noise or music or tv it seems as if we are bombarded by sound throughout the day. I believe, even more so today, that we need to be conscious and practice silence and solitude.
This is a practice that has been handed down through generations. Christians have found silence and solitude as Means of Grace that were extremely important. God has over the history of the Church worked through these Means of Grace shaping and forming the disciple’s life.
Now – if you have ever experienced a relationship of great depth, then you know that it requires that you spend considerable amounts of time together. That time isn’t necessarily productive time working or talking. In fact you don’t have to do anything, it’s just an opportunity to get to know one another.
In many ways that’s what silence and solitude does for us. They allow us to simply rest in the presence of God. We can sit with God with no agenda, or action, nothing but simply sitting in the presence of God.
Like I said earlier, silence and solitude are not part of our normal society or culture. We have devices near us at almost every moment of our waking life that will create sounds or noise. We even have machines to make noise to sleep with if you like.
I often wonder why – me included - we don’t like silence. Are we afraid of what we might find if we have to stop for a moment and not be distracted by sound or noise? What will happen, might God then speak to me? What might He say?
I believe that in those times of silence and solitude we find out who we truly have become. It’s in those moments we are the most honest with ourselves and we do find some things that,
well, we simply may not like. It may be we find some attitudes, tendencies, or habits that may go against who God has created us to be.
My good friend Rev. Janine Metcalf wrote this about silence and solitude – you can find it in the book The Upward Call. She calls her chapter about silence and solitude Meeting God Through Blessed Subtraction. Here’s what she wrote.
“There are times when, under the guidance of the Spirit, we should withdraw from convivial fellowship to be alone with God and silent before Him. Sometimes we withdraw (without ado) from the table where our daily bread is served, focusing on prayer and God. At other times, we may go on a fast from the entertainments and pleasures that so many seek. We may, under the leadership of the Spirit, subtract the popular materialism that makes acquiring things look like the blessing of God.
All these things melded together produce what is often called Christian simplicity. In our journey toward wholeness or holiness we can look at the roadmaps left by 20 centuries of saintly living. Those pilgrims practiced blessed subtraction, and they hand that heritage on to us.”
There are times that we indeed need to take things away – and just sit in silence and solitude.
I believe that everyone who has practiced these Means of Grace took their lead from our example Jesus Christ Himself.
Mark 1:9-12 (NIV) At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.
There are other occasions that Jesus went off to be alone. Early on in His ministry Jesus heals a leper, He tells the leper not to say anything to anyone. And then Jesus instructs the leper to go and present yourself to the priest, and offer the sacrifices that Moses commands for your cleansing. And Jesus does this as a testimony to the priests. Luke writes this
Luke 5:15-16 (NIV) Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed
You know if Jesus did this often, and He was our perfect example of discipleship – both by being discipled and by discipling – then we need to be doing this often, it needs to be with regularity.
The great writer Henri Nouwen notes that “without solitude it is virtually impossible to lead a spiritual life.”
Why…because solitude frees us, it frees us from our bondage to people and our inner compulsions. Silence and solitude frees us for love for God and compassion for others. When we allow God to empty us of our own selfish tendencies, we are much more able to seek the best for others, offering true compassion and empathy to those around us.
You want to know what it means to love your neighbor as you love yourself. It’s about looking upon others with compassion.