Cacophony is the word that has been with me over these last 4 – 5 weeks as I’ve moved around from place to place, attended conferences, heard long speeches, engaged in ministry on and off Arran, been out in the community, and been at home, even. A cacophony is a ‘harsh, discordant mixture of sounds.’ Like the old song, ‘everybody’s talkin’ at me…I can’t hear a word they’re saying.’

I’ve reflected too that in the midst of it all has been my own voice. At the moment, possibly in more ways than at other times in other seasons of life, I’m asked to speak in all sorts of situations and places. In some situations I feel like I have something to contribute, but in others I don’t feel like there is anything that I really need to say, and yet sometimes we can feel it is rude to say little. Many times, silence would be the wise thing (not just for me…)

I am not good on the phone. The phone feels like it needs continual and immediate talking response. For me, real conversation, valuable communication, is as much about the silence in between the words, the turn of the head, or the look in the eye that it is about the sound.

Silence isn’t an absence, there is something present. There are answers in silence we don’t hear anywhere else.

Even now as I type, I’m thinking out loud. It could quite easily be left unsaid, untyped. But as I put these silent words on this page, I feel I say my most important piece, and it’s this: take some time to be still. Pretend there’s a moratorium on speech, a ration on words, an increasing inflationary cost to noise. Take time to come to our senses, to cut the clatter, and learn how to listen from the heart and speak from the heart. This might apply even to our prayers.

Silence is the place where the ‘still small voice’ of God can be heard. And from that divine utterance we might learn new cadences, new harmonies, and new expression in line with his heart. Speak Lord, your servant is listening. Maybe the voice of God will be silence, too.