Today, I did something I haven’t been able to do for a very long time: I listened. This is no small event, my friends, mostly because for a while now I haven’t been able to live in the stillness that listening – true listening – requires. I could not bear the sound of silence, and so I used every tool at my disposal … TV, computer, music player, my own voice, even worship … to drown out the stillness. I won’t explain why silence has been so deadly – another time, perhaps – but trust me when I say that it has not been my friend these last few months.

But today, sitting on the front porch of my parents’ country home, l listened. I didn’t plan on it. I didn’t really want to do it, I confess. But it happened, quite by accident, and in the silence I heard the most marvelous things! The long forgotten sounds of my childhood suddenly echoed in my ears: Newly leaved trees rustling in the breeze. A multitude of calling birds – I really wish I could identify which ones for those of you bird enthusiasts – chirping nearby and off in the distance, announcing the arrival of spring. The wind chimes hanging from the porch, each with their own distinct sound and pitch, and yet somehow blending together in the breeze making for perfect song. The rushing waters of the stream – or as we call it around here, “the crick” – loud, but not quite loud enough to overpower the hoof beats of my parents’ horses galloping in the field above. A distance low hum – maybe the wind, maybe traffic on the highway in the distance – offering up background music to it all.

And in the stillness I was reminded – as was the prophet Elijah (1 Kings 19) – that God is, indeed, in the silence.