Inward Disciplines - Solitude & Silence

I found the definition for the words Solitude and Silence, here they are...

Silence = “The voluntary and temporary abstention from speaking so that certain spiritual goals might be sought.”

Solitude = “The discipline of voluntarily and temporarily withdrawing to privacy for spiritual purposes.”

I was never a big Simon & Garfunkel fan, but I was reminded of a "song of silence" that they penned many moons ago.  Do you remember?

Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

Now that is some groovy stuff let me tell you.  I'm not sure S & G had any real spiritual goal in mind, but what they wrote seemed to have a subtle connect to the importance and value of silence, especially since we are trying to incorporate the discipline of silence with inward spiritual growth. 

We live in a noisy world!  There is actually a Noise Awareness Day if you can believe that.  I think for some of us, noise is an addiction.  My best educated guess for why this seems to be true is because noise tells us that we aren't alone.  That is comforting to us - a door slamming, someone driving a car in our driveway.  It can also be a little discomforting, for instance, at night when you should be alone and then you hear a door slamming.

Some people try and escape through noise.  We crank the music in our headphones so we can't hear the outside world.  Truly, however, what we think is escaping is nothing more then moving from one prison cell to another.  You see, we live in a world that believes the brighter the sign or the louder the advertisement, the greater the response will be, so everyone keeps attempting to outdo the other and what we have is this tsunami of noise coming at us and pretty soon we lose the power to even think and hear clearly. 

Our Creator didn't make us to respond in this way.  The creation account of humanity states that God walked with man in the garden.  Why?  Because God is a God of community and relationship.  God wants to have a relationship experience with us.  NOISE gets in the way of that relationship.  It really comes down to the importance of priorities.  Noise in our lives means that we have things going on that occupy our senses, namely our hearing - people talking, TV blarring, employers demanding.  All of these things occupy our lives and often leave little room for the Lord to even be a dim thought in the corners of our mind.  God wants more then that.  He wants your undivided attention and he has the right to make those demands

I like what Donald Whitney says - "Perhaps you need to be alone with God and deal with some doubts and questions.  Maybe you have come to a crisis of faith that needs time for prayer, deep thinking, and much soul searching.  There's too much at stake to neglect the matter or to deal with it superficially.  If your body had an emergency, you would take the necessary time to deal with it.  Don't do any less for an emergency of the soul."