SILENCE PLEASE

Lake County Mail, Issue 11, 6 August 1947, Page 3

SILENCE PLEASE

The other day when travelling through Central Otago my car went out of order, and while waiting for a passing motorist to convey a message to the nearest garage and the mechanic to come out to me, I strolled up and down the country road revelling in the vast silence which surrounded me. It was not an absolute silence, for there was the sound of a bird, and the whistle 6f the wind- through the power lines above my head, but the silence was amazingly comt* forting and reassuring.

On the other hand there is a picture which often confronts us these days if we call unexpectedly at a house, we find the wireless blaring forth the noise of a crooner or jazz-band, and the only person within earshot reading, smoking and possibly knitting at the same time. How anyone can concentrate or do any job well under those | circumstances is one that defies me. Modern civilisation brings with it a very tumult of noise, and yet if we listen and give silence the opportunity it can speak to us. Yes, there is a voice of silence! “The Heavens de- ' dare the glory of God,” says the psalmist. “ There is neither speech nor language, without these their voice is , heard.”

Again the Book of Ecclesiastes says, “ There is a time to keep silence and a time to speak,” not only, be-it observed because there is not anything worth saying, but because there is, and silence says it best. The silent handclasp speaks more sympathetically than a wealth of words. A chatterbox becomes a bore and Very wearying on his friends. Sydney Smith said of Macaulay, that great

talker, “He has occasional flashes of

silence that makes his conversation perfectly delightful.”* We in New Zealand have been fortunate lately in hearing, either through the medium of the radio or through the eye and the ear ’'in the hall itself, a string orchestra of world-wide. fame. If you heard by either means, did you wonder why pauses in the music? Why was there no sound coming forth? But surely the silences accentuate and emphasise the harmony, of the music which delights the, ear? Some would like to skip the rents, the pauses in the music, but they have been put there for a special purpose, and the good musician listens to the voice of silence.

“Be still and know that I am God ” —how can we know that fact unless we observe the pauses, the silences which He the great Master Musician has written into the score of our life? Yes, God has spoken in times past and still speaks now in the forthright utterances of His prophets. He speaks to us through the words and deeds of the Incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ. But He also speaks through silence, and if we do not give His silences fair play we will not hear Him, speak.

Once;, the re was an old man crippled up with rheumatics who sat in the sunshine by. his-little cottage in the village street. Everyday at a certain time he would -.get up, walk along the road to the church, enter, and sometimes later come] back to his sunny scat by the cottage door. One day his friends asked linn what he' did when lie went to church, to which he replied that he \ycut in a&wl aakl Uis prayers. “ But,” they replied, *“ you must have a lot to ask for by the time you spend there.” “No,” said the' old man, “I go into church and I sits me down, liecause of my rheumaticky knees I cannot kribel, and He talks to me, and I talks to Him.” Yes, ho had found in the quietness of the church the v.oice of God talking to him in the silence. Life yis poisy to-day. .There is more need oif the heating of God, but the appreciation of ythe silences is an art which has to be cultivated. It can be cultivated if wo.itry. . r. C. WILLIAMS.