The Sound of Silence

Have you ever just listened? I mean really listened?

I’m not talking about how we listen to the TV or the radio, or how we men exercise great listening skills when our wives need to share about something important (you do that right?). I’m talking about shutting it all off, turning your phone off, turning the TV off, no computer, nobody speaking, no distractions.

Yesterday in chapel, our speaker decided that we should take 5 minutes in this kind of environment. What’s 5 minutes right….well, when you’re just sitting in a chair with your eyes closed, not moving, not fidgeting, just simply being silent….it seems a little longer.

Here are my observations from our silent time.

“Wow, five minutes is a long time.”

“Is that the air conditioning or a water pipe, sounds like water running through a pipe.”

“The dishwasher in the staff kitchen is running.”

“How loud is that clock?! Seriously, how on earth do we have chapel in here with a minute hand CLICK, CLICK, CLICK’n away like that?!”

“Wow, do I normally breathe that loud? Everybody must be hearing me breathe.”

After five minutes of silence, a thought struck me. Why is it that I have never heard any of these things before, despite spending countless hours in this room? Seriously, I have been here before for hundreds of events and I have never once heard the clock, the dishwasher, or the water pipe. I didn’t realize I breathe so loudly, or that the person sitting in front of me did as well.

I realized that there is a whole world of sounds that I never hear, because I’m not listening for them. I’m simply too noisy to hear them, and all these sounds go unheard. My ears are turned off to the clock on the wall, the dishwasher, etc….in the same way that when I go to visit family in KY, I no longer hear the train roaring by despite the fact that it does so regularly and just down the road. I’ve tuned it out.

Then a thought occurred to me. Have I tuned out God?

I’m serious, I confess to complaining that I haven’t heard His voice lately. At times I really need to know what to do and He’s silent, and I have expressed my frustration to others. “IF God would just speak, I’d go in that direction, but He’s not saying anything!”

Perhaps God is saying something, but I’m not listening. There among the clock on the wall, the dishwasher and that water pipe is a still, small voice, and I am simply being too loud.

It’s not New Years, but I’ve made a new resolution and today I found myself in our small chapel upstairs. Why? Just to listen. And sure enough my old friends came back to me. There was a familiar clock on the wall, the water pipe humming, and the sound of the dishwasher was replaced with the muted conversations of those on the other side of the wall. And there was the still, small voice, a quiet whisper.

“Do not be afraid.”

Frequent Flyer

“Sir can you help us?”

I looked up from my boarding pass to identify the person who made the request. I had just stepped aboard my airline flight and was checking my seat assignment one more time before making my way down the aisle.

“Excuse me,” I replied. “Are you talking to me?”

“Yes sir,” a flight attendant said and moved slightly to reveal a woman standing behind her in the entrance of the aircraft. The woman was in her mid-60’s with shoulder length gray hair and a thin face that revealed concern and bewilderment. Her hand tightly gripped the handle of her carry-on suitcase.

“Do you fly a lot sir,” the flight attendant inquired. I replied that I did. “Would you be willing to help this lady to get situated?” “I’d be happy to,” I quickly answered.

As I turned and headed down the aisle with my new companion in tow, my first thought was, “Don’t they employ flight attendants to do this?” I asked for her seat number and discovered she was sitting behind me. We made our way down the aisle to her row. I helped stow her bag and get situated in her seat. It was then that our conversation began.

Over the next ten minutes or so as we waited for our fellow passengers to board, I learned that despite being in her 60’s this was her first time ever on an airplane. She told me that she knew it was safe, but she had always been afraid of flying and even confessed she had been crying at the gate before boarding.  After entering the plane she began to panic a little, and since there wasn’t another flight attendant around, the woman who had greeted her offered to find someone to help her….me.

What stuck with me from our conversation was a statement she made after sharing about her children and grandchildren in Atlanta. She said, “I guess I just have to want to see my grandkids more than I want to get off this airplane.”

A few days later I was recalling our conversation and realized how there are parallels between this woman’s fear of flying and our life in missions.

Preparing to move overseas presents a thousand questions in our minds. Not questions like, “Does God want us to go?” But seemingly more trivial ones like, “Where will we live?”, “who will our children play with?” or “Can we raise the all the financial support that we need?”  Don’t get me wrong, we are trusting God for our future, but we still do sometimes feel the stress of worry.

So much of our lives during these transitions seem up in the air. And as scary as it is, I think about the statement the lady shared with me and how it applies it to our own lives.

“We just want to see churches planted and growing more 
than being ‘home for the holidays.’”

“We just want to see lives transformed more than my kids growing 

up in America and playing American football.”

“We just want to share hope with young people more than we want 

the security of a paycheck and 401k”

“We just have to want God’s will, more than our own.”

So with that in mind we grip our bags tightly, we take a step onto the metaphorical plane, and we choose to want Him more than we want the trappings this life has to offer.