Silence

Mostly I hate silence. Mostly for me silence is a negative thing. When you prepare a talk, give and talk and then all you get is silence…it‘s difficult. My maybe faulty assumption is that people would say if they like it, so if they don’t say anything it means they didn’t. Sending out emails only to be met with the silence of no responses is…difficult. I find silence difficult. Perhaps it has something to do with my childhood experiences, although I’m not sure I’d be able to tell you why. Oddly though I’ve learnt to sit with silence. The first time I ever took myself off on retreat, the silence was deafening! I arrived, only to realise it was me and my books…for the next five days! Sounds idyllic to some of you I’m sure. But at the time I wasn’t ready for the silence. Over time I’ve learnt how to manage my way through times of silence and value them. I don’t always find it easy. But I’ve found silence gives me space and space is something that can be creative. At least for me. Some of the time! To write a talk, I need space. I need silence. I need to wrestle. I need to formulate what’s in my mind. God it seems is often silent. I suspect one of the mistakes we make is to read the Bible and think everything happens immediately. That one story follows on from another. That there is no silence. Turns out there’s about four hundred years between the end of the Old testament and the beginning of the New Testament. Four hundred years. Four hundred years when apparently God is silent. If we’d been alive then, we’d have lived in the time of God’s silence. I wonder how we’d have got on? After four hundred years of silence, God speaks. He speaks to Joseph through an angel to tell him that the child in Mary is God’s son and that he is to take Mary as his wife (Matthew ch. 1). Joseph says nothing according to Matthew’s account. Nothing. Joseph is silent. In fact, according to the gospels Joseph never says anything, ever. Certainly nothing that makes it into the Bible. I do struggle with God’s silence. Why doesn’t he speak? Why doesn’t he make things more clear to me? Why doesn’t he answer my questions? And then I wonder: if God did speak to me what would I do? I suspect I’d have a whole load of questions and challenges. I’m not sure I’d be like Joseph, who heard God speak through an angel, said nothing, but did exactly what God said: he took Mary home to be his wife. And here’s the thing: God does speak. He does speak to me. He speaks through his story, the story of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. He speaks through his word, through songs, through his people, through his magnificent creation. He speaks. The silence is deafening! Perhaps I would do well to be more like Joseph: to be the one who is silent and follow God in everything he says. And maybe you would too.