Sitting in Silence

Dear Friend,

Enjoy this priceless devotional written by my friend DEA in San Diego.

Good Morning Ladies (and few gents),

A Thought for the Day: “…preach to our heart what we know to be true: I don’t need everyone to like me, love me, or invite me…we all need a few trusted girlfriends (or guy-friends) we can come to with our private prayer requests, our fresh diagnoses, our confessions, and our fears..” extracted from You Don’t Need Lots of Friends…Just a Few “Girlfriends (or Guy-friends) in God” by Wendy Speake.

Well, we have reached the end of my writing week. And I would like to close with this Arabic proverb.

Many of you, like me, have heard the phrase, “silence is golden.” In the Arabic culture, as far back as the 9th century, there is a proverb praising the value of silence instead of speech. Speech is silver, silence is golden. I must admit to an introvert, silence is music to our ears.

Let him sit alone and be silent, for God has disciplined him. Lamentations 3:28 HCSB

GiG, our scripture today reminds us to be willing to come under God’s discipline and learn what he wants to teach us. This involves several important factors:

• silent reflection on what God wants,

• repentant humility,

• self-control in the face of adversity, and

• confident patience, depending on the divine Teacher to bring about loving lessons in our lives.

There’s no doubt God has several long-term and short-term lessons for us right now. The question we must all be ready to answer is—are we doing our homework?

Silence can encourage discipline and focus. Reflecting instead of speaking when an idea comes to mind can encourage us to practice focus and self-control. Silence before the Lord and contemplative reflection support the meditative practice of breath prayers regardless of the setting, we find ourselves in.

I have learned over the years that silence is not comfortable for most people. There is also research that asserts that the silent treatment is 'tremendously' damaging to a relationship. It decreases relationship satisfaction for both partners, diminishes feelings of intimacy, and reduces the capacity to communicate in a way that is healthy and meaningful.

Once again, if this is true for human interaction, how much greater is silence in order to have a healthy relationship with Jesus. When we are silent before the Lord, that is a good thing. But don’t get it twisted; if we are silent before the Lord out of disobedience, disappointment, or any other manner of I’m not happy with what you are doing or have not done; now that is altogether different and therefore not a good thing.

GiG, silence is especially important in our day-to-day life. This can be said because when we are silent most work, we do can be done more accurately. If we are silent, we can achieve more success in our life. The noisy world distracts us from the things we are doing, grabbing our attention. Think about how the noise of our daily lives is interfering with our time with God.

For those of us that silence comes naturally, we are fortunate individuals because we know the power of silence and we are comfortable in that silence. We recognize that silence gets people’s attention, it can be an obvious answer, our nonverbals are more powerful than our words, our silence offers empathy toward others, and believe it or not—it’s polite in a society where we are constantly being barraged by noise and messages.

May we be encouraged to sit in the silence and smile more. Silence and smile are two enormously powerful words. Smiling is a way to solve many problems and silence is a way we can avoid many of those problems. Yes, allow God to meet us in our most vulnerable place—silence and He’ll unconditional love may bring a smile.

God’s Got It…so we can know the TRUTH—The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind. Caroline Myss

Called to serve and encouraging others to thrive,

DEA: Embracing the notion in 2021, silence is more powerful than proving a point.