Silence: God’s Invitation to a Place Beyond Language
Photo Credit: Mathieu Perrier on Unsplash
How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of Hosts!
In Ethiopia, my lack of Amharic struck me like a thunderclap. Before leaving for our trip, I thought I’d build my vocabulary by reading my son Jeremiah board books in Amharic (complete with English translations and pronunciation guides). But knowing the words for lion and rope and grasshopper can only take you so far. After exhausting my repertoire–how are you, I am well, how is your family, my family is well, everything is fine, I am eating, I am full, your dress is pretty, thank you, bye–my mouth would fill with silence.
But God has gifts to give in the space without words.
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Selah. The meaning of this Hebrew word, woven seventy-one times throughout the Psalms, remains unknown; but some scholars believe it may indicate a pause. A rest in the rhythm of the music. A moment to savor the truths just spoken or sung, as if they were squares of dark chocolate melting on the tongue. A space for God’s presence to brim over, burst through the confines of human words.
Photo Credit: Alexander Stein on Pixabay
A God of winds and smoke and fire and earthquakes.
A God of thick darkness and scalding light.
A God who graciously veils the full reality of His presence in the world so that we are not utterly consumed.
Silence allows this mysterious, preternatural God to be known and felt and heard in ways beyond language. Like tasting the sweet of His presence: O taste and see that the LORD is good! Like a nudge of gentle guidance: And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ Or a sense of God’s nearness: the Rock Who Gave Me Birth scooping me into the tender curve of His arms.
Resting from forming words with my mind and mouth is also a way of affirming that I cannot hold the Universe Maker in wiry cages of letters and sound. Emptying myself of words is a way of admitting my smallness and inability to express an inexpressible God.
As Habbakuk prophesies: But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.
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I struggle with this. Silence is a part of the conversation of prayer that I often miss. I tend to fill my hours with sound, even good sounds (worship music or my favorite podcast). But if I never have silence in the rhythms of my day, I miss a gracious invitation to God’s presence.
After Jeremiah was born and I was relearning how to be with God again, I felt Him leading me into silence each morning. Even five minutes. It was difficult. It still is. And I suspect it will continue to be. My mind fills quickly with can’tforgettobuydiaperstoday – needtocallthebankabouttheoverdraftfee – I’mhungrywhatshouldImakefor – shootIneverrespondedtohistext–this list goes on. The world of quiet is so open, I don’t know what to do with myself. Without the meter of music or the cadence of conversation to guide me, I easily feel disoriented, like a balloon emptying itself of helium, buzzing hither and thither.
I feel, as Henri Nowen expressed, “‘useless’ in the presence of God.” And in Ethiopia, being unable to participate in conversations heightened this feeling of futility. But “it is precisely in this ‘useless’ presence of God that we can gradually die to our illusions of power and control and give ear to the voice of love hidden in the center of our being.” Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts of silence. Being still enough to hear God name me Beloved.
Sounds often shove God outside my narrow sweep of vision, hide how very close He is. Sometimes I just need to be still in order to know His poignant nearness. I’m still terrible at silence, but even my pitiful attempts have been shaping me, slowly. Slow in the ways oceans sculpt pebbles, or trees grow. Little by precious little, the discipline of silence is helping me orient my day, my whole being, my life around God each morning. It allows space for me to feel the presence of God, that electric force pulsing all around all the time.
Photo Credit: fotoblend on Pixabay
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Continually stuffing the empty spaces of the day with someone else’s words or rhythms, I lose some of my ability to do what is much harder: listen intently to the voice of the ever-present God. In silence, my spirit is much more active, straining with purpose to catch His whispers. God speaks through words–above all His own Word–but He also speaks in silence. And I don’t want to miss what He says.
Often, He seems to say, Pray. In Ethiopia when silence filled my mouth, God often led me to pray. God brought me lists of names to pray for, so many burdens to offer back to Him. God showed me mistakes I’d made, darknesses I needed to confess.
And He led me, most beautifully, to linger in quiet with Him, just being. One of my favorite Psalms sings:
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me. (Ps. 131:2)
This weaned child no longer seeks her mother merely to nurse. She is calm, quiet, at rest. Even though there is much she does not understand (things too great and too marvelous), she is content simply to lay her head on her mother’s breast. To savor the sweet of her mother’s presence, even more than the milk she offers. To simply be with her, in silence.
In the end, it is God’s presence that I really hunger for.
Photo Credit: Elise Tegegne
This essay is part of a series called “Dwell,” which meditates on the spaces where God dwells with us.
