The Time of the Evening Breeze

Most people do not regard silence as their friend.  If it is a friend, it makes us feel awkward and uncomfortable.  We move from one foot to the other waiting for it to speak some words which will put us at ease and enable us to feel that our world is being righted.  And while we may be able to manage brief moments of such companionship, we are people of the hurrying world, the noisy world, the world filled with signs that scream and people who are caught up in a stampede toward some yawning cliffs.    

It never really seems to occur to us that we might find our life in the midst of the silence.  Silence is a gift given to us by a gracious and kind Father God who is always beckoning us toward the gift by saying, "Be still and know that I am God..." (Psalm 46:10)   The silence which threatens us is really life giving.  It is God's gift to us which restores our peace when we are broken, it gives us the courage to move against the powerful flow of cultural currents, and most importantly, it opens the door to our true self.  Our true self is the part of us which bears the imprint of the Holy and directs us toward His purpose for living the life He has given.  

Of course, we know the silence into which He beckons to enter is not the one that is defined by the absence of the external noise so much as it is the silence defined by the absence of competing voices in our spirit which then frees us to hear once again the still small voice we first heard in the silence of the creative waters of the womb.  The inner silence that He gives enables us to once again know what it is to walk in Eden's Garden "at the time of the evening breeze."  (Genesis 3:8)  This silence which God stirs within us is the one which causes us to know we have come to the place where we belong.