The Pervasive Silence

I must confess to being so accustomed to the silence here at the farm that I often am guilty of not hearing it.  The silence is pervasive.  If is something which settles over the place like morning dew upon the grass.  Even as the dew makes the grass glisten, so does the silence bring a kind of glisten to the farm that wraps it in wonder.  I love standing out on the porch at the beginning of the day with nothing to do but listen.  When there is nothing to hear but the silence, it can be overwhelming for those whose ears are accustomed to hearing the noise which envelopes most people most of the time.  

The real blessing of the silence is the way it holds a sense of holy presence and the way the holy presence makes Himself known through it.  The Creation speaks a silent language.  Perhaps, it could be said that it is a language as old as the Garden of Eden.  The Garden of Eden couple knew God was coming not because His voice was echoing through the place, but because "they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze." (Genesis 3:8)  Those who have learned to listen for the sounds within the silence may suddenly become aware of birds calling to each other, the sounds of rain splattering across the open field, or the gentle stirring of wind which hardly moves the branches of trees and know that is not just physical sounds being heard, but also the sounds of the Lord God moving silently through His Creation and into our midst.  

One of the things learned as we learn to listen in the silence is that life is lived with the expectancy of surprise. Each step we take into the silence of Creation brings us to a place where we might look up and know the presence of the One who is suddenly seen and then suddenly not seen, suddenly heard and then suddenly not heard.  As the poem tells us, every common bush is afire with God.  Sometimes we are able to see the bush that burns that is not consumed, but when we do not see, it is not the fault of of the bush, but our own for God is ever present in the Creation He has made.