Six or seven years ago, a tragedy happened to me. The radio in my truck went silent. What was I going to do? No music for the ride in to town. No Sports Talk. Not even that crazy political guy. Ok, I never listened to him more than once, that was enough, but the question remained, “What was I going to do without noise?” I did the only sensible thing, I took my truck into Bob’s expecting them to fix it, but they couldn’t. The problem was an internal fuse, so I needed to take it to some place that specialized in putting in car radios. I knew what that meant. BIG MONEY! I’m not tight, so to speak, with my money but I didn’t want to spend a sizable chunk of it on a car radio in an old truck. By the way, I’m not tight but I’m still driving that truck. So I had a battle on my hands: Spend the money and fix the radio or go without sound in my truck. I chose wisely. Well, I really didn’t know it was wise at the time, but my thriftiness gave me a great gift that I would not have discovered otherwise…. the gift of Silence.

William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, said, “True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.” Practicing silence effectively requires … well… practice. It takes effort on your part. In his book Noise Reduction Leonard Koren writes, “Like an unbroken horse or a spoiled child, your mind will resist any attempts to discipline it.”

Most of us, like I was, are addicted to noise. All day we are besieged with sound, from the time we wake up to the sound of the alarm until we drop off to sleep at night, often with the TV in the background to “keep us company.”

Try a few moments of silence each day. And begin today. Just a few minutes with no music, no radio, no TV, no conversation. Just a few moments of absolute silence in the presence of God. These moments will be like nourishment to your soul.

Since the time that my radio broke, I have gotten an iPhone that I have downloaded quite a few songs, in fact I have enough Christian music downloaded that I could listen to music all week and never listen to the same song twice, but I have chosen not to, I have chosen silence and listening to God.

As David wrote, “But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.” (Psalm 131:2)