A couple of weeks ago I had supper at the food court at the mall. I started watching the people going by and before long couldn’t help but notice the number of people walking along talking on cell phones or texting. I didn’t do an actual count, but certainly close to 50% of the people passing by were talking or texting. As someone who has my cell phone in my car and turned off most of the time, I am amazed how so many people seem addicted to always being in communication with
someone. I saw one woman walking rapidly, obviously with a destination in mind. She wasn’t just hanging out at the mall. Yet while she made her way from one store to the next, she just had to be talking to someone. Seeing all this caused me to subsequently reflect on how in our society we seem to be always surrounded by sound, by noise of one sort or another. Seldom, if ever, except perhaps when we are asleep, do we choose silence. The first thing we do when we get up is turn on the radio or TV. I bet some people are on their cell phones within five minutes of waking. Silence makes us uncomfortable. Why is that? Is it because when we are silent we are faced with ourselves and that makes us uneasy? Faced with ourselves in silence we might have to deal with questions about what we are doing with our lives and why we have chosen the way we have. We are people of action and have lost the ability to reflect on the purpose of what we do. Better to keep busy than to grapple with what our lives are supposed to mean. But often God is encountered only in silence and stillness. That’s why Christ so often went off by himself, away from the crowds and the noise. We need to rediscover what it means when God says as He does in Scripture, “Be still and know that I am God.“
