Psalm 62 Silence
Silence is golden – or is it simply embarrassing?
I’m sure you have experienced that awkward moment in a conversation when everybody falls silent. There is a kind of ‘Where do we go from here?’ silence which people are loathe to break.
When there is silence in Church some folk look around as if to say ‘Who should be doing something now?’ ‘Have they forgotten?’
Or can silence be constructive, giving people time to reflect on what has already been said or done?
Perhaps I can be silent in myself when others are praying or singing – is that OK do you feel? What happens if I mentally absent myself from the service to meditate on God’s unfailing love, as the Psalmist seems to have done: is that OK? It’s certainly better than worrying whether the dinner is cooking properly.
This week we are going to reflect on the place of silence and stillness in worship. And then perhaps reconsider what might be appropriate in the corporate act of worship in Church.
v 5 Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him.
A little book by Richard Foster (Prayer – Finding the heart’s true home. ) begins a chapter on Contemplative Prayer with some reflection on this Psalm. I can do no better for you than quote a section of it.
Contemplative prayer immerses us into the silence of God. How desperately we in the modern world need this wordless baptism! We have become, as the early Church Father Clement of Alexandria says, like old shoes – all worn out except for the tongue. We live in a wordy world with our sophisticated high-tec telecommunication systems. We now have the dubious distinction of being able to communicate more and say less than any civilisation in history. Isaac of Nineveh, a Syrian monk, once observed, “Those who delight in a multitude of words, even although they say admirable things, are empty within.” We today stand under the rebuke of this observation.
Contemplative prayer is the one discipline that can free us from our addiction to words. Progress in intimacy with God means progress toward silence. ”For God alone my soul waits in silence” declares the Psalmist. (Psalm 62:1) The Desert Father Ammonas, a disciple of Saint Anthony, writes I have shown you the power of Silence, how thoroughly it heals, and how fully pleasing it is to God … Know that it is by silence that the saints grew, that it was because of silence that the power of God dwelt in them, because of silence that the mysteries of God were known to them.” It is this recreating silence to which we are called in Contemplative Prayer.
So turn off Radio 4 and Classic FM this morning and learn to enjoy the silent peace of a new day walking with God in a word-strewn world.
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