There's a famous story in the book of Joshua, where he leads
an army around a city in silence for a week, before they let out a loud shout
and God gives them a victory with hardly any other effort from them.
This got me thinking.
An entire week, this group of people heard nothing but
nature and the sound of their feet marching around a city. They spoke about
nothing. They discussed nothing, and planned nothing. They had no idea what
anyone else was thinking or going through or feeling. All they knew was
silence.
How stark a contrast is that when you compare it to the way
we live? There's hardly a moment of silence in our lives, let alone our week's.
Think of your average day, and all the voices you hear. All the opinions you
hear. Think of all of people's moods, and troubles, their excitement and their
plans that are thrown at you. Ironically, even this blog you're reading right now
is a part of all the noise in our world that bombards us incessantly on a
continual basis. People want you to see things from their perspective, or to
buy their product, or to conform to their world view, or to be on their side
when it comes to an aspect of life. All this is done through words, through
noise.
It makes me think of silence. When I don't hear from
friends, or family, then I miss out on what's going on in their lives. If I
don't take the time, for whatever reason, to listen or talk to others then I
can't love them adequately, because I have no idea how to actively love them in
a relational way. Think about the torture you go through when a loved one gives
you the ‘silent treatment’. If we can, we do whatever it takes to break down
that silence in order to love them interactively, again. In a very similar way,
how can I love God if I don't drown out the rest of the noise of life, and
focus on His voice? Instead of hearing what others say about Him, or instead of endlessly speaking things at Him, what
about silencing myself to hear His voice? This is what will grow my love for
Him.
Finally, my mind falls on the involuntarily silent. Those
who are screaming, and are never heard. Those who are crying out for love, but
their cries have been so expertly combined with the consistent noise of life
that we can no longer make out what their cries are saying. Amongst those
cries, I hear the kids on the street of Sao
Paulo , and I long to answer at least their call. I
want to help in being an answer to the cry of someone whose voice is being
harshly ignored.
Face your week with determination and conviction in your
life, but don't keep the volume on so loud that you become deaf to
the voices that matter. Take some time out to silence all that you can,
hear what God has to say, He could have an answer you need to hear.
Or maybe, just maybe, He knows where you could be an answer to a forgotten voice.