In the empty time between laying down and sleeping,
Let the silence go deep,
Sounding out and searching your heart.
(Everyday Psalms, Psalm 4, page 11)
In an old black and white episode of the TV show The Twilight Zone, two men make a wager. One man bets the other that the second man can’t go a year without talking. The second man, an incessant talker, takes the bet. Over the course of the episode, we see the first man taunting the second man, trying to get him to respond. But no response comes from the completely monitored second man. Eventually, the year concludes and the first man receives a note from the second man. In it, the jabber jaw says he needed the money from the wager so badly, he accepted the bet even though he knew he couldn’t win. So, he did the only thing he knew that would ensure victory: He had his tongue surgically removed.
It’s an extreme solution. It makes me wonder if the writer of the episode had been meditating on the words of Jesus, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away” (Matt. 5:29). But it also exposes our noisiness and our struggle to control our tongues (see James 3:1-12 and numerous sayings in Proverbs).
But not all of us are extroverted and loquacious. External silence, though, doesn’t mean internal silence. The noise inside of us can far exceed the noise around us.
Prayer holds up a hand and tells me to shut up.
Sometimes, our best prayers are simply silent. A wordless self-offering.
This can be because we don’t know what to say. And that’s quite all right. But it can be done because silence is sometimes a more appropriate form of self-offering that words. Our words can be a way of controlling conversations, a way of hiding by way of talking about inane things. This is especially true of those of us who are preachers and other professional talkers. Silence can be a way of avoiding as well, but it can also be the offering of pure presence. Here I am, just me and nothing else, no words, nothing.
In a world of pervasive noise, a minute here and a half hour there of silence in the presence of our Lord is a necessary prescription to combat the chaos and foster connection.
Prayer: Here I am. Hear my wordless prayer.