Silence toward God

Silence toward God
Psalm 62

A friend of mine has gone on a month’s silent retreat (he is answering e-mails, which seems a bit like cheating, but then maybe so is reading or listening to talks). He needs to know what is to be the next stage in his life and his service of God, and he wants to listen to God in the quiet. Another friend of mine recently went on a two-week silent retreat to undertake the exercises devised by Ignatius of Loyola to help us in discerning where we are with God. I quite believe that people need such times of extended silence to get the noise of life out of their ears, but I am nevertheless struck by the fact that there is virtually no encouragement to silence in the Scriptures— hence our need to give a new meaning to a verse such as the one in Psalm 46: “Be still and know that I am God.”...