To wait silently on God.

We often talk a lot when we pray. Our hearts desire so many things that we cannot stop speaking. We fill ou prayers with words. We have much to ask God, much to say to God.

And this is good. God desires that we pray.

But there is a negative side to such talking. To talk to God, has its place and time. But we need to listen to God in the first place and we need to hear what God says to us. A word of God can refresh us, restore us, transform us, inspire us and bring new life to us. It can bring our desires to fulfillment. It can full us with peace – something our own words and thoughts can never do.

This is why we read the Bible and listen to the witnesses of saints of all times. If we talk too much, we will hear only the echo of our own words. We become captives of our own talkativeness, of our own thoughts and words. We are so caught up by what we want to say and what we speak, that we are not receptive for words of God.

That is why it is a good exercise to read the Bible – and, importantly, to begin this in silence. We “wait” on the Lord. It is a “quiet” time in which we are preparing, making ourselves ready for what God has to say to us.

This is even more important in the light of the fact that the Bible speaks “softly” about God. The authors of Biblical books want to speak about God in broken, restricted human language, whilst God is much greater than language and cannot be contained in our human speech. How can we ever express who God in in language? God is ineffable. When we speak about God, we can only do so haltingly, humbly, knowing we are trying to do the impossible. Who can ever express the divine mystery in human words?

It was the great challenge for Biblical authors to communicate their experiences of God. When we listen to them, we wait in silence to hear what they are saying, so that we can understand well, experience something of what they were experiencing. We must be careful not to let our words interfere and block what they were trying to say. And we need to be careful to experience what they were expressing in their witness. So we are asked in more than one way to wait in silence to hear them clearly, to let their soft words of God penetrate our minds and hearts.


So we take up their books in silence, even in awe. Silence prepares our hearts for what they are about to witness to us. We open the books in silence, we listen to them in silence and we allow the words to echo in our hearts and to penetrate our minds – long before we even think of responding to them. In 1 Kings 19 Elijah heard a thunder storm , an earthquake and fire. But God was not in this noise. Then came the silence. And God was in the silence.

I want to think and write more about this in the next few days.