Silence is the greatest teacher.
(Reflections from “Silence”, The Way of the Heart, Henri Nouwen)
I have often been found guilty of over sharing- the first few sentences are all that really needed to be said, why did I go on? Why did I feel I needed to give more explanation? Why did I feel my words were more valuable than others thus dominating precious time?
The truth is, my words actually are valuable and worthy. The words I have to speak have come out of hours, days, weeks, and years of studying, meditating, and receiving from God on a certain topic that my heart/soul/mind was ready to learn and absorb. So how can I expect to convey a thought or idea to someone who is not primed in the same area? These words turn into conversations, into debates, sometimes into arguments- but did they need to be said? Did my words bring others to life?
“Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”
A glass of water is refreshing, so stop there at the glass, why continue pouring buckets and buckets drowning the listener? Henri Nouwen compares this concept to refraining the deep that you have to storing this wealth of life inside for the travelers and passerbys along the road of life who will come and sit by my fire to get refreshing, life, and peace.
A man I greatly admire for his silence and choice of words is Bill Johnson. I have been around this man and his teaching for 20+ years, and anyone who has been around him would attest to his fine ability to smile in silence, and then the one small statement he makes is like a nuclear bomb correcting and aligning every heart in the room. A most prime example I’ve ever experienced of “truth in love”.
Reading through the desert fathers, I was reminded of conversations in the old days with Bill, and the wisdom he carried. I remember thinking, “What kind of secret life in God do you have to have to get to a place where you have no need to fill a room with your own words? What kind of well must this man have dug in private, to sit confidently silent around others, with a continued intimate conversation with the Father going on around a fire on the inside of his soul?”
I was a very young believer in those days, but those things shaped me and drove me into the cave in the spirit. Not to highlight this one man above others- I have seen amazing qualities in many leaders that I have gleaned from. But today, as I read once again this book I love to read, this quote from Diadochus of Photiki gripped me.
“When the door of the steambath is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in it’s desire to say many things, dissipates it’s remembrance of God through the door of speech…”
Now more than ever, as everyone is looking for their platforms to speak, to preach, to share- to overpopulate their airwaves with what they think, feel and believer to be the truth and the answers, even the “Thus saith the Lords”, over what is happening in America and the world- I have more fear of the Lord over my words than ever before. I tremble at the temptation to share my insights or ideas… I have a holy reverence for the exchanges that have taken place in my cave between the Father and I, many of which I can not adequately describe in English. Why would I take things so deeply cultivated with the Father in the Spirit and minimize them to a 142 character tweet?
I want to dig deeper. This cave of silence, it opens up a door to an expanse that we have yet to wander… the door to the treasure room only to find within that room is the door to the real treasure- the endless, indescribable ocean of the living God.
