The Value of Silence

Lately, I have realizing that I am finding it hard to work in silence. I always seem to be multi-tasking: watching TV or a movie and working on the computer at the same time, sometimes even adding background music to the sound/media cocktail. I don't know exactly when this started, but it's been a while now since I worked in absolute silence.
I don't know if it is a subconscious attempt to fill the emptiness I've been feeling for so long, but I have a feeling it is very close to the truth.
I haven't been very busy schedule-wise lately: Oh, I've been doing things, but I haven't really (or so it seems at the moment) been accomplishing very much.
I think I just did not want to be reminded of the spiritual wall I had erected in the last months (and months) which has only within the last day or so begun coming down again. If I filled my life with media, things, and busyness, maybe I would not have to face the truth.

I have been alone in a house for three days this weekend after being with people in close quarters for a week. And although I was alone, more or less, for the month before, it is only now that the silence and the solitude have broken in and I feel the empty place I have been trying to fill with layers and layers of distractions.

The melancholy loneliness I felt a couple days ago begins to make sense: I am really, truly lonely for my Beloved Saviour. My heart begins to yearn for HIM again, instead of trying to push him away.

Sonnet XIV--John Donne
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

He has done it, despite all my attempts to keep Him out.
I am my own enemy, the enemy line 10 speaks of, and the wall has finally cracked a little under the battering ram of solitude and silence.

It has become to me a reminder of the necessity of silence in our lives, both physical and spiritual silence. It is in the silence where we hear God speaking to us. By filling our lives with things, busyness, and media of all shapes and kinds (and how can we avoid it for long in our society) we block out the silent place where we commune heart to Heart with the Lord. And it becomes easier and easier to keep that place blocked up and "full" so that our conscience cannot prick and stab us. We disconnect from our ability to feel--to feel our sin and our need.

This is where the Wilderness time experienced by so many of the Bible saints and the New Testament church fathers becomes relevant for us today. We need to learn to go into the Wilderness and just LISTEN. We do not have to DO or try to be or feel spiritual, we just have to sit and be still and silent and LISTEN for God's "still, small voice." If we wait on Him, He will come to us.