A woman went hiking to escape the noise of the city. As she climbed, she kept listening to music and the news through her earbuds. Near the summit, the battery on her phone died. Annoyed, she pulled out the earbuds and continued walking.
For the first time on her walk she heard the wind moving through the trees, birds calling across the valley, and the distant sound of water. She stood still for several minutes.
Later she reflected, “I thought I had come to see the mountain, but I had been carrying the city with me.”
Many congregations live with the same condition. We arrive at church carrying news headlines, phone notifications, family concerns, work pressures and internal chatter.
A moment of genuine stillness in worship is not an empty gap in the service. It is a moment when, for a brief time, we stop carrying the city and allow ourselves to become aware of the presence of God, of one another, and of our own hearts. In that sense, silence is not the absence of worship; it is often the doorway into it. The moments of silence then give us energy and perspective for taking up again the concerns of our lives.
This Sunday in our series, ‘Rediscovering Worship,’ we’re thinking of the vital role that silence can play when we come together to worship.
Box Hill Baptist Church 