Silence & Solitude
Series: In the Way of Jesus
Sermon Content
That I was supposed to preach was so devastated by the Detroit Lions loss that I called Peter. And just said, hey, can you pinch hit this morning? Can you just jump up there and say something because I can’t now that rumor was not true But that does not say it mean that the emotional damage was not great Especially when I came across this picture lurking around on the internet when the Detroit Lions remember their The Detroit Lions.
It’s like a coupling of my childhood emotional pain and my adult emotional pain. And there we are. But no, I am here. And ready to preach. We are in a series called In the Way of Jesus. A series born out of our Sermon on the Mount series of last year. If you’ve read the Sermon on the Mount you quickly become aware that the Sermon on the Mount is primarily ethical teaching.
It’s high ethical teaching, difficult to follow, but if that was to be all you heard of the teaching of Jesus. You might go away saying, Jesus, do you not have something for us to do, perhaps? Not, not rules to obey or a lifestyle to live, but do you have some kind of spiritual practices for us? Prayer is mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount, but but not much.
And yeah, as you start to read the gospels, you start to pick up on this robust spiritual life that Jesus have. We’re one of a growing group of churches that believe that churches today are called to live at that fulcrum point of the ethics of Jesus and the spirituality of Jesus. If you try to live the Sermon on the Mount by yourself with no empowerment from Jesus, Ultimately, it’s impossible to live up to.
It’s, it’s just too high. It needs this God like connection to our hearts. The, the, the mantra that we’re kind of saying over and over again throughout this series is this. Life with God. empowers life for God. The moment that is twisted, life just becomes really difficult. So, so last week, Peter came and he shared with us just his beautiful journey of prayer.
If you were gone last week, I just encourage you to go back and listen to a person who exudes this beautiful love of God and love of prayer, but who kind of confessed during the time, this is not natural. To me. This was a learned experience one that you can learn as well I love particularly this quote that he shared from Paulie Miller Jesus does not say come to me or you have learned how to Concentrate in prayer whose minds no longer wander And I will give you rest.
No, Jesus opens his arm to his needy children and says, come to me. All who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. The criteria for coming to Jesus, weariness, come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy. It’s a beautiful invite that reminded me of where we started on the first week with, with just this beautiful translation in the message of Matthew 1130.
Learn the unforced rhythms. of grace. This is something you’re invited to step into and learn that isn’t forced, it isn’t produced, is a step by step walk with Jesus. As I heard Peter talk, I kind of came away with this old line from a hymn back in the 18th century. It was this, prayer is our vital It’s almost like this need within us, this gas.
When I worked on a golf course, I would drive out of the undergrowth. If there was this section that went through the woods and I would come out the other side onto the top layer of the golf course where the wind would blow across. And sometimes on a winter morning, it would just. Catch you in your chest, and you’d literally find yourself gasping to take some air in.
Somewhere that’s called to be our posture, this deep desire and need for prayer, for communication with our Father. And yet, coupled with that beautiful picture of this is not a forced thing. So, super thankful to that, for that word from last week. This week, we move on to a couple of other elements, spiritual disciplines.
Today our focus will be on the practice of of solitude and silence. This is one of those beautiful areas for me to share on because by nature, I am terrible at these things. By all accounts, we should have found someone much better at solitude and silence to come and share this. But the beautiful thing is that I get to share it from a place of brokenness, of a hardship of difficulty.
By nature. I am an extrovert extrovert when we were talking at New Year’s Eve about New Year’s Eve as a party I was sharing once that on one New Year’s Eve. I managed to go to four Different parties two of them. I went to after 12 o’clock and I went to one of them Twice. So that really kind of made it five.
I just wanted to be around more people. I just love that. So to me, silence and solitude is something that I appreciate because I’ve actually taken time to enter into it and not because it’s natural to me. If you are perhaps kind of new to faith, and you say, this kind of thing doesn’t interest me. If you perhaps grew up in an environment where prayer was simply things you said to God, perhaps you say, this isn’t something that interests me.
If you come from a different stream of Christianity, perhaps you’d say, this seems like something that I am not interested. Then you are not alone. My struggle with solitude and silence is something that I’ve clearly passed on to at least one of my children. In a gentle parenting conversation as we were working on a communal table in the house together, I said to my second daughter, Gigi, You know, Gigi, you don’t have to feel every moment of quiet or silence.
There doesn’t have to be constant questions, and she replied like this, and it’s going to earn her at least five dollars. I don’t like silence. I don’t like silence. The heartbeat, right, of every 10 year old, at least, for the most part, silence is not an easy thing. And yet, when practiced, as you’ll see, I hope that it’s a beautiful gift.
So, in preparation for this, I got to go to a place that’s become a place of great joy to me. This is Sacred Heart Retreat Center down in Sedalia. It’s a Jesuit retreat center. I’ve just, no. Talking, pure silence, just a gift of space. So I was there just practicing what we’re going to talk about today.
Like all practices, solitude and silence, these two things that we’ll talk about, they are learned behaviors. They’re something that we enter into by choice. So, where to begin? I’m going to ask you to do something just a little bit unusual. For a moment I’m going to ask you, Just to close your eyes, just to imagine with me you sat in a room.
It’s quiet. Nobody’s talking to you Nobody wants you to do anything. You don’t have to think about what meals to cook today Somebody took care of that for you. You don’t have to think about cooking Somebody is going to do that for you. As you sit on the bed, catch a glimpse out of the window and catch just a blue sky with a couple of clouds trailing past.
Now open your eyes for a moment. Depending on your personality, there’s one of two options that you could’ve landed on given the choices that I gave you. Perhaps you found yourself in a boutique hotel, just beautiful, high class. Five stars, a Michelin starred chef ready to cook for you. Beautiful, comfortable bed, maybe a great bathtub next door.
All of those wonderful things. Perhaps you landed in a hotel. The other option is that you could have imagined yourself in a prison cell. The same things apply, right? There’s a bed, right? Nobody’s bothering you, nobody’s coming to talk to you, you don’t have to cook, you don’t have to think about any of those things.
The difference in the practice of solitude in both of those things, sure, is different, but the actual elements of it are the same. Solitude, depending on how you’d see it, I would suggest, is either an imprisonment or its true freedom, a beautiful place to exist, at least just for a moment. Solitude is something that once you’ve practiced it, I would say, you crave it more and more.
The writer Alexandre Dumas speaks about this, he talks about his character Edmond Dantes and his imprisonment in the Chateau d’Ifre for about 14 years. Dantes is imprisoned at the moment where he hopes that all his expectations of life are to be fulfilled. He’s about to become a captain of a ship. He’s about to marry his fiance.
And finally, after escaping a four from 14 years of enforced imprisonment, DeMar writes these words, this frequently happened. D. Test cast from solitude into the world, frequently experienced an imperious desire for solitude, and what solitude is more complete. Or more poetical than that of a ship floating in isolation on the sea during the obscurity of the night in the silence of immensity under the eye of the Lord.
It’s this moment where he’s free and sailing across the Mediterranean and at peace with himself. I asked AI to draw me a picture of this, or to create an image of this, and this is what it created. Everything seems pretty perfect, other than the extra planet that actually looks like the Death Star to a degree.
It’s like Count of Monte Cristo and Star Wars, the movie crossover you didn’t know you needed this year. I don’t know what that looks like. There’s a loneliness to this writer, an escape to this, a space to this. A space that on the surface to some of us might be somewhat intimidating. A sense of like, am I comfortable there?
As we enter into these couple of practices, something that I’d love to invite you to remember. While we might be fearful of these practices by nature, of being alone, of not being able to talk, Jesus, as we’ll see, used them often as a way of connecting with his father. Jesus used them repeatedly as a way of connecting with his father.
So I’m going to read us a text. not about Jesus initially, and then we’ll come back to a couple that are. So if you’d like to stand with me for the reading of the word, I’m gonna open to 1 Kings chapter 19. If you want to read along, you are welcome to do so. This is verse 1. I’m reading from the NIV version.
Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a message to Elijah to say, may the gods deal with me. Be it ever so severely, if by this time, I do not make your life like one of them. Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servants there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness.
He came to a broom bush, sat down under it, and prayed that he might die. I have had enough, Lord, he said. Take my life. I am no better than my ancestors. Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep. All at once an angel touched him and said, Get up and eat. He looked around and there was bread, though by his head there was some bread baked over hot coals and a jar of water.
He ate and drank and then lay back down again. The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, Get up, for the journey is too much for you. He got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and nights until he reached Hurab, the mountain of God. Then he went into a cave and spent the night.
And the word of the Lord came to Elijah, saying, What are you doing here, Elijah? He replied, I’ve been very zealous. For the Lord of God Almighty, the Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with a sword. I’m the only one that is left. Now they’re trying to kill me, too.
Then the Lord said, Go out, stand in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake came fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak around his face, went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? Jesus, as we ask what you have for us today, help us to listen, not just with our minds, but with our hearts.
Encourage us. Perhaps some of us feel discouraged like Elijah in this text. Perhaps some of us face uncertain futures. Questions about who we are. Thank you that we’re loved. Thank you that you care deeply for us and that in partnering with you, we’re going to be okay. Amen. You may be seated. Practices of solitude and silence might be fearful to us, might be intimidating, but Jesus used them often as a way of connecting With his father.
So let’s begin by tapping into some of the ways Jesus practiced solitude. Luke chapter 4 verse 1 This is the start of Jesus ministry Jesus full of the Holy Spirit left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness He stays there 40 days in prayer and in fasting in Luke in chapter 5 verse 15 We read this yet the news about him spread all the more so that the crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses, but Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
Even Mark, who some people describe as the gospel in a hurry, Jesus is always moving somewhere, always taking next steps in the book of Mark. It says, very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place. place where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him.
And when they found him, they exclaimed, everyone who is looking for you, Jesus repeatedly sought out these lonely places, which is fascinating. Jesus, the potentially the busiest man in all of history, the person with the most purpose for this world took time to do nothing in one sense to, to leave. To go and find a place away from the crowds.
This person who could heal diseases, this person who spoke profound words, took time to not do those things. To remove himself. I have a suggestion for you. These passages to me at least suggest that solitude offered Jesus a place to pursue and model a core identity. Not as a miracle worker. Or even as a spiritual leader.
But as one deeply loved by his father. Some of these stories follow great miraculous events. Some of them precede great miraculous events. And yet this moment, this time away, seems core to who Jesus is. To what he wants to model for us. There’s a beautiful gift in solitude. When we go into spaces away from other people, we see.
a true selves. There’s no other person to compliment you, no other person to approve of you, no other person whose approval you deeply desire. It’s one of the beautiful gifts I find at Sacred Heart. Nobody cares who you are. Nobody’s interested in you. Nobody wonders why you’re there. You’re simply a human being existing, looking for God.
It’s one of the true great gifts that a human being can receive. Not bouncing off another person, not taking your identity from another person, but just simply existing. Jesus goes to these places looking for those moments of solitude, but across church history the suggestion has been not just solitude, but silence too.
The two are related. They’re close, but they’re not directly the same thing. There’s kind of like a nuance to both of them. So silence, yes, Jesus looks for, but how is silence connected to that? There’s this beautiful gift that comes out of solitude. This embracing of a true self makes true speech possible and personal.
If I’m not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. I am estranged from myself. I am likewise a stranger to others. Solitude coupled with silence seems to make that possible. Silence is having a moment in all these cultural places. This is a screenshot of the TV show, Billions.
Two of the main characters who are not in any way Christ like people, not in any way trying to follow in the way of Jesus as we might be. Both of them do their morning affirmations, do their morning mining, mind it mindful. You watch as they sit in these moments of silence. If you own an Apple watch, you might have the same alert that comes up on your watch regularly saying, Have you practiced mindfulness today?
Just on a, just a natural level, silence, we’re told, has benefits. Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the pen name George Eliot, says, Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us worldly evidence of the fact. It’s kind of like a take on the anonymous saying, better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Two quotes that bring terror to the heart of every preacher every time he stands up on stage. And yet, even if you don’t practice silence for spiritual reasons, you’ve probably practiced it in some way recently. Perhaps you’ve been driving to find a location. You’ve been traveling down a road, you’ve got a map that comes up on the screen and, and you begin to look around for a building that’s unfamiliar to you.
Kind of know the general location, but you don’t know exactly where it is. Maybe you’re driving along, you’re listening to Forrest Frank if you’re under 20, Gaither, gospel if you’re over 60, I don’t know, whatever your particular thing is. And it’s loud and you’re enjoying the drive and the music. But as you get close to that location, what do you do?
You usually find yourself unconsciously, perhaps reaching out for that stereo and you take it and you turn. the volume down. Something inside of you tells you that you cannot operate in one sense while overstimulating another sense. There’s something about overusing the hearing that stops you being able to see.
Somewhere the same is true on a spiritual level. When you dial down the noise around you, including the chatter that, at least for me, constantly floats around in my own head, something happens on a spiritual level. And that’s what we see as we turn to this story about Elijah. Now Ahab, we’re told, Ahab is the king of Israel at the time.
Although Ahab is certainly a bad king by biblical terms, he comes from a father, while also bad, who was immensely powerful. His father, Omri, had taken the kingdom of Israel and returned it to some of the heights that it had been under his famous forefather, Solomon and David. So much so that in the wider community, the wider group of countries in this area, it was no longer known as the House of David.
But now known as the House of Omri. Elijah is in conflict with an incredibly powerful king in this scene. In the preceding scene to this, Elijah has had a showdown with what are called the prophets of Baal, a false god from a different area. In the midst of that time, there’s been a drought, and the drought is broken by this moment where Elijah calls down fire from heaven, and the people of Israel rise up and kill the prophets.
It’s been a very complex moment for Elijah because there’s been a victory followed by this promise of his impending Death. So Jezebel, the queen, sent a message to Elijah to say, May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow, I do not make your life like that of one of them, one of the prophets of Baal.
It’s a moment where Elijah seems to panic. He’s not being fussed about any Ahab’s threats up until this point, but here. Something seems to change for him. Perhaps it’s simply a revelation of the fact that Jezebel will not be convinced by anything. Elijah’s called down fire from heaven. All her prophets have been killed and yet And she’s still convinced, still fighting on the opposite side.
So in this moment, Elijah does what I would have done, what many of you may have done. He runs. Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, a different town, he left his servant there, a kind of interesting quirk of the text. He no longer wants his servant around because his plan is to travel a day’s journey into the wilderness.
He wants to die. He wants to choose his own death rather than be killed by an evil queen who is deeply vengeful towards him. So we read these words that are maybe the lowest words of Elijah’s life. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it, and prayed that he might die. I have had enough, Lord, he said.
Take my life. I am no better than my ancestors. Then he lay down under a bush and fell asleep. While none of us have been, I expect exactly where Elijah is. We’ve probably all had moments where we said, I’m not sure what’s next. I’m not sure what to, how to cope. I’m not sure what to do. I’m not sure how to fix a particular area of my life.
Maybe a moment where you don’t have suicidal ideation, like Elijah, but a moment where you say I’m just, I’m just done with the whole thing. I’m done with church. Maybe I’m done with following Jesus. Maybe I’m done with work. Maybe I’m done with my family. Something, something that feels like it’s come to an end point that you have no control over.
In this moment there’s a gracious intervention for Elijah. All at once an angel touched him and said get up and eat. He looked around and there by his head was some baked bread over hot coals and a jar of water. The beautiful gift of this text is simply to a hungry and tired man food and water and the offer of more sleep.
He ate and drank and then laid down again. After some sleep the angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said get up and eat For the journey is too much. Do you know journey has been proposed up until now? There is no God like purpose revealed in the text up until this so he got up and ate and drank.
Strengthened by that food, he traveled 40 days and 40 nights, until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. Horeb is synonymous with Sinai, the mount that Moses went up on, received the Ten Commandments, a very important spiritual place for the nation of Israel and the nation of Judah. There he went into a cave and spent the night.
And the word of the Lord came to Elijah, to came to him saying, What are you doing here, Elijah? And at this point, Elijah unleashes all of his grievances, all of his struggles, all of his angst for the current situation. He feels sorry for himself. I have been very zealous, very active, very engaged for the Lord God Almighty.
The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with a sword. I am the only one, and now they are trying to kill me. It’s the ultimate low moment. I have nothing. Nothing. The Lord said, go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.
Notice that initially he doesn’t. He doesn’t move. Then, a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in a fire.
Great natural events, some of which have been important things in Elijah’s own ministry. He’s just had a great victory over spiritual opponents where opponents where fire has fallen down from heaven. And yet here, fire falls, and God is not in those big, loud events. And finally, something else. After the fire, a still, small voice.
We’re told that God speaks to Elijah. In the still, small voice. Depending on the version that you have in front of you, there may be all sorts of renderings of that, which speaks to just how confused we are about exactly what this means. We’ll get to that in a moment. Here’s some of the different options that you might have come across.
After the fire came a gentle whisper. Somewhat similar, maybe different. After the fire came the sound of a low whisper. After the fire the sound of sheer silence. And after the fire there was a hissing of the wind as if soft breathing, and the Lord was there. the Lord was there. All these different versions exist simply because of the difficulty of this Hebrew phrase, qual de mama de qua.
It quite simply is complicated because qual times means voice. At times, means sound. And then there’s this tiny little mark in the Hebrew text called a tipcha. Which is kind of like an accent in English language. Maybe if you have a loan word that comes from the French language you see. A little accent note that says pronounce this in a different way.
Sometimes that works to connect two ideas. Sometimes it works to separate two ideas. So the whole thing is just complicated. But there’s this common trend across all of them. There’s this moment in which God speaks and Elijah hears. In the midst of the noise, in the midst of the chaos, there’s a moment when everything gets very quiet.
And Elijah hears exactly what he needs to hear. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and he went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, What are you doing here? Elijah. The journey moves from absolute terror of a moment of brokenness all the way through these different stages to this point where Elijah is at his most vulnerable, and God speaks to him in a particular way.
For those of you that like to nerd out with me a little, I know this is too small to read. You can take a picture. This is what’s called a kaiistic structure, where it starts at point A and it moves outwards to point E and then moves back in, and it’s an exact mirror of itself. Elijah flees from the world and all his work for God and and he comes back at the end to Returning to it and for his and to his work for God But everything lands every bit of focus is on that verse 12 where God passes by and Speaks to Elijah in this beautiful still My Old Testament professor taught this to us in seminary, and after working through it academically, we’re kind of working through it now, there was a moment where his voice switched, and he suddenly started to share this very verse in the most vulnerable of terms to a bunch of cynical seminary students.
He talked about a moment in his past life where he’d found out that his wife was having an affair. They had a moment of divorce, a moment where the kids went with his wife, a moment through all sorts of scenarios. He lost his business, he lost his home, he lost his family, and ended with nothing. He said he stood on the side of a lake in the middle of winter, and he was about to throw himself in the lake.
And then there was this moment where he paused, and he said a voice that was as close to audible as you can get without being audible, simply said to him, Dave. If you have nothing else, am I enough for you? He said he hovered on the side of that lake for just a moment before getting down on his knees in the middle of that winter cold and saying, God, if I have nothing else, you are enough for me.
This was this moment of deep trauma that a man experienced that was redeemed by this moment of God’s gentle, still voice. Now, there’s all sorts of times where people don’t receive that kind of moment. There’s all sorts of moments where people come back from this kind of brink through all sorts of friendships, through counseling, all those different devices.
But this was a moment that mirrored this story in just the most beautiful. He was met with this gentle silence, this still, small voice in the midst of that, and responded to it. Somewhere, silence, from our part, is a form of surrender. It’s a choir that says that we don’t actually have to say anything right now.
Maybe we’ve said everything. there is to be say, said. Maybe like some of the Psalms, we’ve stormed and ranted and cursed about situations that we’re facing, perhaps to God himself. And then everything that needs to be said has been said. There’s nothing more to say. And something inside you comes to a point of stillness and of quiet.
C. S. Lewis, the writer theologian, said this about prayer. Once all his thoughts and images have been flung aside, or if retained, retained with full recognition of their mere subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible presence of God, there with him in the room, and never knowable by him as it is, as it is, as it is, knows him, then it is that the incalculable, incalculable may occur.
Man, that was a sentence. He’s talking about this moment of just sheer, just rest and surrender before God. Acknowledging that you don’t have all of the answers and, and perhaps, or probably never will. The lead singer of the band U2 talked about this in his own life. Bono said that music was always the easiest thing for me.
I wake up with the melodies in my head, but now I feel more like Shut up and listen. If you want to take it to the next level, you may have to rethink your life. I’m getting to the place where I do not have to do, but just be. It’s like my antidote to me. The antidote to me is surrender. If you have found that you’ve kind of come to the end of yourself, perhaps spiritually, perhaps in every single way, Maybe solitude and silence is a practice that enables you just be, to be present with God.
To embrace your not knowing. To embrace your not enough. To embrace your insignificantness, as I’ve had to do so often in this practice. To simply come before God, accepting that He is who He is. And you are who you are. To accept that the same God that made the earthquake, the fire, those things, those big supernatural events, speaks to you in the still small whisper.
Perhaps it’s the moment where you stand and look at the grandness of nature. Perhaps you drive up I 70 and you hit that moment of the continental divide where you say, I can’t believe this exists. And wrestle with the fact that the same God that made that, made you and values you far more than any of it.
If silence and solitude is beginning to sound just a little bit attractive to you, maybe the question is, how can we begin? So I wanted to give you some practical ideas, and they’re these. Maybe silence and solitude begins by finding a moment alone. Maybe it’s first thing in the morning before you get out of bed.
Maybe before you reach for the phone and start scanning all the notifications that have come in during the night. Maybe before you pick up the novel you’ve been reading. Maybe before anything else and some of you, I’m in a time of life I can’t do this at that time. Maybe that’s you as well. But find a time where just for a few moments you’re alone.
Perhaps it’s the moment that the kids are in bed. Perhaps the moment before you turn off the lights, before you head to your own bed, some time where it’s just still. There’s nobody else there. Maybe find a posture that’s comfortable. Seated in a chair that you like, feet rooted into the ground, arms maybe stretched out just in front of you on your lap.
And start with just five or ten minutes. Maybe just in that moment acknowledge to God that I actually don’t know how to do this. I know how to speak words. I know how to come with a laundry list of things that I’d hope that you did for me and for the world around me. But right now I’m choosing not to ask.
I’m choosing to try to listen. Maybe you pick a word that helps you focus. I’ve tried lots of words that, that, that fit into what’s called centering prayer. Lots of times where I’ve picked words like beloved, like Jesus. Recently I’ve had this word that might seem kind of strange on the surface. It’s the word storehouse.
There’s this lyric of a song I love that says simply, you’ll never come to the bottom of God’s storehouses of love. And so to me, storehouse has been this word that instantly makes me picture a huge grain silo on a farm somewhere and the, the immensity of the things that it holds and just a recognition that, that God’s love for me is bigger, vaster, beyond all of.
But maybe there’s a word that helps you quieten your mind. Because if you’re like me, when you sit in this posture instantly, you have a million things to think about. The monkeys bounce all over the cage and it feels they simply can’t be quietened, but they can, they can. And maybe the fifth thing is, just be patient.
Because this is not a journey that necessarily ends after five minutes. It’s not something that’s like a switch that you turn on. It’s a practice to be learned. One of the things I’m convinced you’ll find is this, some of your richest moments with God will come not when you say something, But when you choose not to say something.
When you decide that it’s just possible that what God has to say to you might somehow be slightly more important in that time than what you have to say to him. That your read on the situation, while important to share, might be Less adequate than God’s read on a particular situation. When your wisdom, despite your learning, despite your education, despite everything that you know, might be less than God’s wisdom in a situation.
Where you choose to say, God, I’ve spoken and now I’ve come to the end of speaking. For just a moment, I’m going to be quiet in the hope and trust that you might speak. As we remain in silence, the inner voice and chaos begin to settle, begin to quiet around us. Those are the moments where the God of the universe speaks.
One of the moments that that catches me off guard every year. is New Year’s Eve. At least New Year’s Eve as it happens in England. This is the Elizabeth Tower that houses Big Ben, the giant bell that rings across the whole of London. You can hear it from the most surprising places. On New Year’s Eve, it’s the moment like our ball drop, the moment you guys have the ball that lowers.
This is the moment where you have the chime that runs the Westminster chime that runs in a pattern that marks both quarter past, half past, quarter to, and then finally the hour and every time the hour rings There’s this moment where the the bell dongs The number of hours that we are at. Maybe one, maybe two.
On New Year’s Eve, of course it dongs twelve times But the time that shifts the year is the first dong. You wait for the chimes and then this dong. On New Year’s Eve Some brilliant person decided, you know what we’re gonna do We’re going to extend that gap. We’ll make the chimes run earlier, so instead of the dong following straight after the chimes, there’s a wait.
Maybe 10 seconds, maybe 15 seconds. So on New Year’s Eve, you hear the chimes, and they have that normal pattern that you know and love, and then there’s this moment where everybody, nobody says a thing. Somehow, all of the experience of the last year seems to get crushed into that one moment that extends and feels like it lasts for an infinity.
Silence has a way of doing that for you. Makes everything feel like it’s over the top. It’s everything is stretched out or everything is crushed in to that moment. All your hopes for the next year seem to get held in that moment. All your expectations, all your dreams. Every argument seems to be forgotten.
Every moment of tension seems to be forgotten. Everything seems to land there. And so every time it comes, I have this moment where I just turn my heart towards my father in heaven. And I just hold last year in my hand. And I hold this year in my hand. I hold the past, the future, every single thing. I say, God, this is all yours.
You know all of this stuff and you know me. And my heart longs for you. That you would speak to me. That in the same way you would claim the mountains and the hills, you would claim me also. And he does. He does. So often in those moments, friends, I just hear something like this spoken to my heart. You are beloved.
Same voice that speaks to the rose and makes it unfold. Speaks to me here in my chest. And I can rest. I can rest. That’s what solitude does. That’s what silence does. As we remain in silence. The inner voice and chaos begin to settle, because God is there. Jesus,
I’d hate to end this service with just my words,
with just our singing. We’ve talked and dreamed about silence, about solitude. So we just stand for a moment, or sit for a moment. We just hold that posture before you.
