Last week I was looking at the most popular apps in the iTunes app store and I couldn’t believe my eyes…a random noise-making app was #1. Pushed as a “health” app, it essentially plays white noise to help people relax or sleep. Supported by a bunch of newspapers as innovative for sleep and relaxation the app says, “Sleep Great with White Noise.”
It is incredible to me how trained the human brain is for noise in our culture.
When Rose was gone for 10 days in Honduras, the hardest part was how quiet it was in the house. It seems that for me and for many of us silence is a bad thing. It is a situation we do our best to avoid.
I wonder why this is. I’m certainly no expert, but I’d say that silence forces us to listen.
Silence forces us to listen to our thoughts, to the emptiness, and most of all, to God.
Between traffic, tv, radio, and social media, there is no way to function well in society without an ability to manage noise. Whether it be audible noise or just life busyness, we are much better about dealing with volume than enjoying silence.
No doubt God often speaks to us through the shouts of difficult life circumstances and through the beauty of worshiping in community, but we rarely allow him to speak to us in the quiet moments. Not because we don’t want to hear from him, but because the quietness makes us feel vulnerable, even naked.
