God's Gift of Silence

 God’s Gift Of Silence

“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” Psalms 46:10 NKJV

The season of Advent marks the beginning of our Christian journey - a time when we reaffirm that Jesus Christ is our Shepherd of Love guiding us to an adventure of a life of love. It is a time to reawaken our sense of awe and wonder with the stories of Advent and the Christmas carols. As we sing:

“Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
'Round yon virgin Mother and Child
Holy infant so tender and mild....”

let us remember that we are the children of God. Let us recapture the childlike spirit of meekness to inherit the beautiful world that God has created. The spiritual discipline of silence is to help us to do so. Keeping silence expresses our trust in God and when our minds are fixed on God, He will keep us in perfect peace (Isaiah 26:3).

Last year, I lost my voice during the season of Advent and I was led to rediscover God’s voice in the discipline of silence and contemplative prayer. “Desert spirituality” is the reaction to and liberation from “empire spirituality” of Christians in the fourth century after the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine and elevation of Christianity to a state religion in 313 AD. Instead of being persecuted, Christians found themselves being tempted with greed and the lust of power.

The practice of silence and solitude is to examine the true condition of our hearts. To seek meekness with the hidden agenda to inherit the earth is very different from having the be-attitude of meekness to bring heaven on earth, This comes from having a spirit of gentleness rooted in our faith in the grace of God. The journey to examine our hearts is therefore  a journey we all have to take before we can truly follow Jesus. We need to be aware of our hurts, hangups and negative habits of thinking in order to leave the God we know with our minds. Only then will we be able to meet a God with our hearts - a God we don’t know and can’t possibly imagine with our minds.

Learning and practising to be still is to become aware that we are more than our brains or minds. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a human experience. At Christmas we celebrate the coming of Jesus from heaven to embody meekness as a baby in a manger:

“Instead, he emptied himself; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.” Philippians 2:7‭-‬8 NLT

The truest sign of our salvation is when we live with humility or meekness because we know that we cannot take our salvation for granted - just like  a member of Alcoholics Anonymous who can never take his cure from alcohol addiction for granted and is always dependent on the grace of God to keep him from falling back into addiction.

Our human tendency is to show off our strengths and to hide our weaknesses. When we do so we become our own worst enemies for then we know deep within ourselves that we are hypocrites. The way of meekness is to keep the good things we have done in our hearts and to share the messy realities of our daily lives.

The first step in our journey in Advent is therefore to offer ourselves as living sacrifices as we seek a Christmas that is really Christmas when we truly give our hearts to Jesus in repentance and surrender:

“And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.  Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” Romans 12:1‭-‬2 NLT

May the Lord lead our hearts into a full understanding and expression of the love of God and the patient endurance that comes from Christ (2 Thessalonians 3:5 NLT) as we seek God’s gift of silence in this first week of Advent.