THE POWER OF SILENCE
Read the words of some famous people regarding silence:
An inability to stay quiet is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind
Walter Bagehot
Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on
silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise
and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation...
tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and
trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads
monstrously like a gray vegetation.
Jean Arp
CREATING SACRED SPACE FOR YOUR CHURCH WITH SILENCE
For the full article please read Church Tech & Media by Erin Moon
Silence and solitude are two virtues almost completely undetectable in
modern culture. There is a lack of quiet places, places to rest and listen,
spaces free from the constant buzz of humanity.
Even for spiritually mature adults, silence is a difficult practice. It’s almost
second-nature for us to fill in the blanks during the day, if only to avoid
awkwardness. Our smartphones, while massively beneficial in countless
ways, can also function as “social-interaction-pacifiers,” filling a hole when
we get restless or uncomfortable in a new environment with games, apps,
and the loudest distraction of them all: social media. Obligations, projects
and deadlines push up against the lines in our calendar, pushing every
moment to its breaking point. Everywhere we turn, we are constantly
encountering noise from every section of our life, something always vying for
our attention. And most of it isn’t even bad.
But silence has become so counterintuitive to how the world operates today,
and its value is immense. So many of the saints who came before us daily
practiced solitude and found that not only their spiritual lives bettered, but
also their lives in general.
Silence for most people is an almost completely foreign concept, and
wouldn’t it be an incredible thing if the modern church was key in helping
them reclaim this act of spiritual discipline? God’s Word is filled with
encouragements towards keeping silent and listening to the Lord. Psalm
11:12 says, “whoever belittles his neighbour lacks sense, but a man of
understanding remains silent.” The Proverbs are all over silence, reminding
us constantly things like “better is a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of
feasting with strife.”
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