“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him” (Psalm 62:5 ESV).

My family has a cabin in the woods. Waaaayyy back in the woods. There are no roads. You have to walk or take an A.T.V. to get there.

I recently spent a night there with my son. At night, we tucked ourselves into bed. He fell asleep. And I just laid there listening…

To the pure, undisturbed, crystal-clear SILENCE.

I guess you can’t really listen to silence, can you? But you know what I mean. And when I say silence I mean ACTUAL silence.

No cars. No planes. No birds. Not even any wind.

When I’m at my house in town, it’s never truly silent. Even in the middle of the night I can hear the refrigerator or furnace running. I can sometimes even hear the tick-tick-tock of a clock on the wall.

But for this one moment at a cabin in the woods, I could not hear a single, solitary thing.

And my thinking had never been clearer.

Do you know the expression, “I can’t even hear myself think”? People say it for a reason. Noise and distraction make it harder for us to think… 

and reflect… 
and set priorities that matter… 
and rest… 
and breathe.

I realize that not everyone has a cabin way back in the woods. Many of us have demanding work or school schedules, a lengthy to-do list, the rigours of parenthood, medical appointments, and a dozen other things.

But you can find 30 minutes of relative quiet—a separate space where your time isn’t subject to an invisible tug-of-war.

If your thinking has become foggy, frazzled or frantic, insert yourself into some silence.

“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.”

By Matthew Ruttan