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“Silence is anything but passive waiting. It’s proactive listening.”

A thought by Mark Batterson from his book, Whisper: How to Hear the Voice of God (p. 15). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

Noise is all around us.  The purpose it seems is to keep us from thinking or even listening and that is a problem.

Mark earlier said, “When our lives get loud, with noise filling every frequency, we lose our sense of being. We run the risk of turning into human doings rather than human beings. And when our schedules get busy, we lose our sense of balance, which is a function of the inner ear.

“Can I go out on a limb? Your life is too loud. Your schedule is too busy. That’s how and why and when we forget that God is God. And it takes very little to distract us. ‘I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly,’ said the English poet John Donne. The solution? Stillness. Or more specifically, His still small voice.”

Mark then says, “Silence is anything but passive waiting. It’s proactive listening. The noted author and professor Henri Nouwen believed that silence was an act of war against the competing voices within us. And that war isn’t easily won because it’s a daily battle. But each day God’s voice gets a little louder in our lives until He’s all we can hear. ‘Every time you listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls you the Beloved,’ said Nouwen, ‘you will discover within yourself a desire to hear that voice longer and more deeply.’”


Oh how we need that desire, don’t we?
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