I’m a drummer and love a good beat in a song. I think I was hooked the moment I saw one of my cousin’s drum set as a very young child (like three years old). I would bang on things from that moment on in life. However, my first musical taste was classical music. To be fair, it did start with Hooked on Classics that was classical music to a beat. I enjoyed other Christian music of the late seventies (2nd Chapter of Acts, Imperials, Don Francisco) and really got into 80’s Contemporary Christian Music. In fact I have a I have a playlist on Spotify and iTunes of those favorite songs. The Spotify list is 14 hours long. The iTunes list is 1.2 days long and I listen to it VERY often to the point that my family groans and insists on something else. I love having music on in the car to “play” along with my steering wheel “drum set.”
However, with all that said, there is a sense of peace and silence that I need. My kids, while they were still at home, knew that it was a particularly stressful day when they found me playing classical music in the car. While that is still something I do from time to time, the aspect of silence is something to be cherished. Sometimes, I drive with no sound on in the car at all as almost a refuge from the noise of the day.
In our digital age, we are so connected to the steady (or perhaps “overwhelming” is the right word) stream of technology: streaming music, video, social media, notifications, and just noise in general. The dings and buzzes of a text message, rings of a phone call, and bleeps of notifications are unceasing. I live on 42 acres and I can still hear nearby road noises and just the general hum of the city and suburbs around me.
I work from home. My office, during the week, can be a place for that quiet. I’m not one who has music going while I work in most cases. If I do, it’s designed as white noise. When I wrote my dissertation, I would play the same album over and over (and over) because it was background noise (shout out to Rebecca St. James and her Transform album. . .I wore that thing out). This morning, for example, I had to run to an appointment first thing. However, then I arrived back home, got the dogs taken care of, and then settled into my chair. The dogs settled down and laid on the floor and it was just quiet. It was a gray, chilly day outside where you could just nestle up with a warm drink and a good book if it was the place for it.
Certainly, it can be quiet and still crazy busy with your mind racing over the thousands of things a minute that it is working on mentally.
However, if you let it, if you stop and take the time, the quiet leads to an opportunity to connect with the Father. Recognize those times and “steal” them like they are gold. Let the quiet pervade so the gentle stirrings of the Holy Spirit become louder and clearer. This quiet time is building relationship with God that He’s ready and waiting to have with you.
This is not an easy thing. While my office can be a place of quiet, it can also be a place where I just slip into work mode instead of embracing the quiet. It can turn an opportunity for a “prayer closet” into chipping away at your never-ending to do list. I say this from experience as I’ve wrestled with giving into the temptation to just jump into the work. Even as I write this, I’m wrestling with whether it’s better to just stop and spend time or if continue writing as this could be a message that someone will need to hear. You will have to protect the quiet.
So, where are your places and times of quiet? Where can you steal away with the Father to learn to love Him and be loved by Him. Where can you experience His tender, daily new mercies?
Your quiet may not be the same as my quiet. However, seek out and protect those times of quiet. Be intentional about finding and cultivating them. Not for the sake of just quiet. . .but for the sake of getting to know God more intimately.
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