The Sounds of Silence

The other night at our Ancient Prayer Practices study, we were studying the role of solitude and silence in our prayer life. As a group, we set aside five minutes to go and be silent. I went into the sanctuary. I immediately noticed that it was going to be hard to have silence. We have a heating system that circulates hot water through pipes in our floor. In the "silence" of the sanctuary, you could hear the gurgling of the water in the pipes. To me it reminded me of the sound that your stomach makes when you get hungry. At that point, I knew that God was speaking to me in the silence.

My mind began to fill with images of hunger and promises of God's fulfillment of that hunger. I knew that God was giving me a mini-course in letting him satisfy the hungers of my soul. It also was a neat way for me to share with the class when we got back together.

Anothe person heard the same gurgling sound and was reminded of the fact that when she goes on a retreat, she likes to find a place near a stream so that she can sit and listen to the water and let God refresh her.

That night, God used the sounds that intruded upon our silence to teach all of us some very important lessons.