Into the silence..........

For God alone my soul waits in silence,

for my hope is from him.

He alone is my rock and my salvation,

my fortress; I shall not be shaken.

On God rests my deliverance and my honor;

my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.

Trust in him at all times, O people;

pour out your heart before him

God is a refuge for us. 

   Ps62.5-8

My private prayer life (in contrast to my professional prayer life which requires a more public articulation of our approach to God) has reached a place where I rarely speak words aloud.  Most times I am forming words in my mind.....although rarely complete sentences......just images, phrases, single words.  

I have experienced a time when silence was the most I could manage.  I had no words.  There were no images.  Sentences had been lost days and weeks and months before.  I did not seek this time of silence; it wasn't a meditation practice.  It was a time when time stood still, breath was elusive, the future was no more than a blank void.

I was beyond participating in my future: time had simply stopped and I knew the futility of my feeble attempts to shape tomorrow.  I stood absolutely still, frozen in the cross hairs of life and at most I prayed that the Spirit was praying for me.  Remember the story of Elijah in the cave waiting for God who came not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire but in the sheer sound of silence (occasionally translated 'a still small voice').  I waited in the silence for an encounter with God.

This psalm brought me back to those times when I learned a little bit more about waiting on God and trusting in the Creator to hold me close.  For me the psalmist has captured the intersection of the cross......where this world and God's eternity are bound together, a moment when we stand in the silence and await our God.

It was a terrible time when God came close and called me deeper into a life of trust.  I would never choose it voluntarily; I would not be who I am without it.