In the midst of noise, find your quiet place
- Kyle Snyder: Live on Purpose
- October 7, 2020
- 785
“I am very concerned that our society is much more interested in information than wonder, in noise than silence.” — Mr. Rogers.
I remember one Sunday about 20 years ago when the pastor of the little church in Clark told a story that to this day has a lasting impact on me.
One day a New York businessman invited his friend to the Big Apple. The friend was a Native American who spent much of his time out in the woods; he had never been to the big city before. The two walked down the busy streets talking among themselves, when out of nowhere his friend asked him where he thought the cricket is?
“What?” the businessman replied. “There are no crickets in New York City, and even if there were, I couldn’t possibly hear one with all of the noises in the city.”
The friend told him to follow along, and block after block they walked until they stopped by a tree at the edge of a sidewalk. The friend got down on one knee and began poking around until he picked up a cricket and showed it to his New York friend.
Why does silence scare us so much? When it comes to being still and waiting on God or just waiting for an answer, for many of us, silence is too deafening. We won’t be silent because it allows too many bad memories to come into our mind. You know those memories we try so hard to just ignore. We think if we can ignore those thoughts, maybe they will just go away, and for a time it might work. However, a thought that is not dealt with will over time come back again and again.
Sometimes, we keep busy to run away from our own thoughts. We can grow to hate what enters into our mind. We all have bad thoughts; it is called being human. The only way I have found to make them go away is to face them with boldness and give them to the Lord. Just tell him to take them from you. He is always willing to help us; all we have to do is ask. Maybe he will take them away, or with his help we may have to look at them and tell them they don’t have any power in our life anymore.
I learned, in my own life, that the more I allow myself to be silent before the Lord, the more he allows me to see things from his perspective. I can see it may not be as bad as I had imagined, or maybe I am paying it too much attention. If a person says something bad and I just let my mind relax, I may be able to see they were biting at me because they were reacting to a bad day or an emotional overload from that day.
I find silence relaxes my mind and causes it to slow down and really gets me to thinking at a deeper level about things. The value of deep thinking is so priceless; it is lost on the world today.
However, if we are really going to hear from the Lord, we need to be willing to be silent before his holy throne. It’s called seeking the Lord. Too many of us think we can solve our problems, but we are simply not that smart. We need to seek and wait on the Lord. If we do it on our own, then we are just wasting our life.
Do you think he is mighty enough to solve your problems? Find a quiet place and just wait on the Lord. You will be glad you did.