Friends For The Journey

I have learned to deeply appreciate silence. In Dallas Willard’s book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, he discusses the classic spiritual disciplines and includes both silence and solitude as important forms of tuning out the world and tuning into God.

I have found it to be essential for my own mental health and emotional balance to begin the day with a few minutes of silence. Sometimes we listen to soft worship music – other times we just listen to the birds as the sun comes up. Of course, I usually have a cup of coffee in my hand!

In these early morning silences I am centering my soul the One I love and who has loved me. I am opening my inner ear to listen. It reminds me of a passage in Isaiah 50, verse 4 which talks about having the ‘tongue of a disciple”.

He wakes me up in the morning,
Wakes me up, opens my ears
to listen as one ready to take orders.
The Master, God, opened my ears,
and I didn’t go back to sleep,

Notice in Psalm 65 that both silence and obedience are praise AND prayer to God. Prayer is not only talking out loud to God… prayer is everything we do – our lives are a prayer to God … our very obedience … even silence or sighing and groaning can be prayer to God.

The rest of Psalm 65 is beautiful and well worth reading but verse 8 particularly catches my attention:

Dawn and dusk take turns
calling, “Come and worship.”

I have always enjoyed watching the sun come up and watching the sunset (although I confess I have seen many more sunsets than sunrises).

All of creation joins in the heavenly worship … Dawn and dusk call us to come and worship.