"The silence is deafening!"

Anyone who has been to a rock concert knows the truth of this saying. The silence echoes in your ears as you walk back to the car, and travel home. Even the stereo that you paid big dollars for no longer has the quality you once knew. And the small sounds of life are submerged beneath the beating pulse in your ears. Even the whispers of a loved one are lost to the air.

Last weekend in Kerang, I took opportunity to look up at the sky on the clear night, and drank in the awesome array of lights in the heavens. Many more stars were visible there, away from the electrically-charged metropolis of Melbourne. The sounds and sights of nature found new emphasis away from the competition of man-made supplements. I could have rested and absorbed their beauty for hours. And as I lay still, I came more in touch with the sounds of life - even of my own, as I could hear myself gently breathing, and the water around me lapping at the sides of the pool (it was a hard weekend~!)

Our bodies take time to adjust to silence, to stillness, and the surrounding environment screams at us to do something, to say something, to notice and respond to the noisy world about us. It takes tremendous strength to resist these calls, and be still.

When we complain that God is far from us, that we do not sense His presence, I am tempted to ask how much we have overcome the deafening silence in order to hear again the still, small voice of God.

Beyond that deafening silence lies a whisper of love too precious to risk being lost in the competition for our attention.

Are you listening - long enough to hear?