On Silence

In the last 36 hours Sallie and I (Rich) attended the wake of a friend's father who died and then had the wonderful joy of witnessing the birth of our sixth grandchild Dylan Elisabeth weighing into life at 7lbs 8 oz. Death and life, sadness and joy ... both impacted my soul.As I reflected on both I was drawn to Psalm 62 and especially verse. 5. "For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him." The Psalmist is giving counsel to his own soul. A form of self-talk if you will that we all do through our days in one way or another. Only in this instance there is some measure of pleading that the Palmist is doing to his own soul. Here the Psalmist is urging himself to focus his heart and mind on God alone in silence. Perhaps an attempt of his to shake his mind so that it might be uncluttered from competing concerns. Or something like a self-admonition that he would step back internally from competing desires.  Or maybe an attempt to remind himself, no, rather anchor his soul in the essential love in his life, or just simply to remind himself of the foundational source of his security because he was frightened by the abundance of threats to his own personal safety. The Psalmist's and our soul travel among many distractions.What we need to notice is that the Psalmist isn't exhorting himself to get with it, or to ratchet up more activity but rather he is urging his soul to silence, a waiting in silence. The waiting adds an additional measure of stillness. Maybe we should think of silence, or the waiting in silence as something like a pairing knife. Silence trims away clutter and excess.  The quiet- the silence- cuts away the unnecessary clamor that congests the soul and distracts it. The silence brings then openness by simplifying.  It ushers in clarity of soul that busyness will never offer.   In the openness, in the clarity, and in the stillness of the silence our hearts are able to re-calibrate toward a more profound and essential orientation of faith and love toward God.   In the silence there comes the reminder and the knowing of our truest and deepest hope in our triune God as life is taken away and life is given.