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Listening for God: The Discipline of Solitude Spencer C. Lawrence, Church of the Cross, Hoffman Estates, IL, February 11, 2007 David Goetz in his book Death by Suburb writes: Speed and efficiency rank high in suburban values. Garbage cans with properly colored tags are set out on the curb weekly on designated days. Dogs must be licensed before February 1 . . . . A friend’s “covenant community”in the West requires him to paint his patio home one of three or four earth tone colors, but only after he gets permission: “The appearance of the community is of vital importance to the environment and to property values . . . . It will be necessary to submit a Design Review Request, even if you are painting your home the same color”. . . . At one of our Park District pools, placards of rules adorn every piece of equipment – fences, slides, chairs – including the warning, “Additional Rules may be added, if deemed necessary by the management.” “I hate going to that pool,”says my five-year-old, “’cause you can’t do anything there.” What Goetz says about suburban life resonates with me, even if we live in different suburbs. Goetz lives in Wheaton. I live in Schaumburg. Speed and efficiency are important. We value getting things done quickly and with the least amount of cost and effort. We suburbanites are doers, and we’re good at it. After all, we tell ourselves, life is short. In today’s lesson, Luke tells about a time that Jesus took three of his disciples, Peter, James and John, up a small mountain for the experience of a lifetime. It was just after Jesus first spoke to them of his coming rejection by the authorities and eventual death. In Mark’s version, Peter took Jesus aside and corrected him saying that he wouldn’t be killed. After that, Jesus called him the devil and told him to be quiet. There on that mountain appeared Moses and Elijah and they talked with Jesus. Jesus’ clothes turned a very bright white – so white they shone; in fact his whole body looked as if it were bathed in an otherworldly light. Peter was stunned. He didn’t know what to say, but not knowing what to say never stopped Peter from speaking. He offered to build three booths to honor Moses and Elijah and Jesus. He thought he was being generous; he was honoring Jesus right along with Moses and Elijah – two heroes from the Jewish Hall of Fame. Then all at once, Moses and Elijah disappeared. They were nowhere to be seen. Jesus alone remained. A cloudy mist came over them. A voice came from the cloud. It said: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.” The cloud dissipated and Jesus was there all by himself. The disciples didn’t get the meaning of this event right away. Later they did. 2 Peter says this: “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.” It was Jesus – not anyone else – who was worth listening to. It’s a message we who live in the age of speed and efficiency need to hear. We are Christians. We do honor Jesus as Savior and Lord. We worship him. It’s just that we don’t often take time to listen to him. We don’t have time for solitude. You see, many of us are uncomfortable with silence. In part because it seems so unproductive, as if nothing were getting done – and there is so much to learn, so much to do. So our lives are surrounded by noise – both visual and auditory. When we ride in our cars we have music or the news blaring. Nowadays we can even get satellite radio with over 100 channels. We can listen to every sporting event known to humankind. And if it’s on TV we have amazing new devices to record any program we miss or might miss in the future. Now I am not knocking new technology. Nor am I complaining about satellite radio or the new devices that make it possible to record our favorite TV shows – without commercials. I wish I had them. And even if I never get them I still like to have surround sound for my life. I always turn on the radio in the car. When I am on trips to my mother’s or to Streator, I take CD’s that help keep me up on the latest thinking. I’ll also bring my iPod Shuffle on which I have loaded lots of music. At home, I often turn on the TV when I am eating dinner and then later sit in front of the TV and work or talk on the phone or send emails. I am not paying much attention to what’s on – even if it’s a show I like to watch. I just don’t want to miss anything; it’s called “multi-tasking.” Besides that, it’s just nice to have a little noise in the house. It makes it feel as if someone else were around. But what’s so bad about that? God gave us ears – why not use them? And can’t God speak to us through CDs and Christian radio and even secular TV shows? Of course. God can do anything. The problem is not whether or how God speaks. The problem is whether or not we are listening. And it’s hard, if not outright impossible, to listen when we’re in a hurry, when we’re trying to do three things at once, even when we’re trying to fill our minds with Bible verses or the lyrics of a song. We pay attention best when we’re not trying to do something else. That was Peter’s problem. He wasn’t getting it. He thought he had to do something – build three booths, when actually God wanted him to do nothing except listen to Jesus. There is a time to act. There is a time to listen. The time to listen always comes before the time to act. This was not a new idea. It was clear in God’s call to Abraham. God promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation, and that nation would have a land of its own, and through that nation God would bless the rest of the world. Abraham heard God and believed – not very much, just a little. But it was enough move him to follow God’s leading. God reiterated the promise to Abraham over and over. Abraham tried to help by suggesting that his servant Eliezer become his heir. God said “No” to that. Abraham got impatient and had a son through his wife’s attendant Hagar. He thought he could help God out – just like Peter. But God said, “No. You will have a son by Sarah.” Over and over God urged Abraham to wait and to listen. Finally the promise was fulfilled. Listening came before the acting. The psalms are filled with language urging us to be quiet before God. Psalm 46 reminds us that even if all the world is in turmoil, God is still in charge. It instructs us to “Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 62 begins with “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken.” Actually, this language constitutes a refrain in the psalm. It occurs again in vv. 5 and 6. The psalmist says that trust in God begins as we wait for God in silence. And then there was Elijah on Mt. Horeb. He had “defeated”the prophets of Ba’al in a kind of spiritual warfare. Then Queen Jezebel had threatened his life and he ran like a scared cat into the mountains. He hid in a cave. There was a wind storm and an earthquake and a fire. Surprisingly, God didn’t speak to Elijah in any of them. God wasn’t present in those flashy events. Then there came a still small voice, and God was in the voice. God met Elijah in the silence. There are times when we - to paraphrase the words of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland - should stop doing something and just stand there. There are times when we need to slow down and be quiet before God. David Goetz tells about a time he sat quietly and listened: About two weeks after my trip [to Russia], around 4:30 A.M., I was waiting for a colleague to take me to the airport. We planned to catch an early flight out of O’Hare. I had a few moments to spare before Kevin arrived, so I sat on the couch in our family room in silence that was almost as deep as the I once experienced when a snowmobile I was riding broke down in a secluded North Dakota pasture, miles from the nearest farm, on a bitter cold starry night in January. I felt as if I were in deep space. I don’t remember how long I sat on the couch that morning – perhaps only ten minutes – but up through the silence into my consciousness a sentence formed: “I will provide.” My head began to throb with the phrase. The fact that the sentence was in the first person – and not the third, “God will provide”– threw me at first, until it hit me who I was. While Goetz still had to work hard to keep his company afloat and he hasn’t really struck it rich yet, he and his family have not lacked for much. Yet the memory of that earlier experience moved him to another level. He adds this: Solitude has at times disturbed me, raising more questions than supply answers. When I find time for solitude in my suburb, I can think about the deeper motivations of my crazy life: Why does money mean control and power to me? Why am I so competitive with so-and-so? Inside space is the prayer of stillness. It may be the only kind of prayer that can unseat my reign as Lord of my suburb. Solitude helps us remember that there is much more to our lives than making money and getting ahead, than keeping up with or even looking better than our neighbors. And life is about more than getting a lot of things done quickly. Solitude reminds us that God is God and we’re not. What do we do with this? The season of Lent begins in ten days. I invite you to join me during the 40 days of Lent in a renewed attempt to discipline our spirits by listening for the still small voice of God speaking in our lives. Before I say more about the “how”of solitude, let me say something about the risks. Not every thought that pops into our minds will be from God. Thoughts may come from past voices that still rumble inside our minds, or from the selfish side of our personalities – what Paul referred to as the carnal nature, or from somewhere else altogether. Test the thoughts that come into your mind when you are silent. You can test them by comparing them with Scripture, with God’s standards for living made plain in Jesus Christ. For example, if you are sitting in silence and hear a voice say in your mind, “Go throw a brick through the pastor’s car window”, that is not God speaking. Trust me. I know about these things. Not every voice is God’s voice. Now, to the “how” of solitude. I invite you to spend five or ten minutes every day just sitting in silence. It can be at the beginning, the middle or the end of the day. The time of day is not important. That we take time to be silent is. Just sit and listen. You don’t have to take notes. You don’t have to read anything. Do that another time. Simply ask God to speak and then listen for what God says. If God speaks to you I would be glad to hear about it, but if you’d rather not tell anyone then that’s O.K., too. If you already spend time in silence, you could extend the times of solitude to other realms of your life. For example, you could listen to the radio half as much as you already do. Maybe turn it on when you drive to work, but turn it off when you come home. Turn it on when you go shopping, but turn it off when you return. You can do the same with the TV. Watch it half as much. Spend the extra time exercising or reading or talking to your spouse or playing with your children. The same could be said for the computer. Not every email has to be answered right away. And the news really doesn’t happen so fast that you need to check it online every thirty minutes. Solitude is an opportunity for us to give up trying to control everything and listen to the One who does control it. | |||||
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