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Silence — A weapon or a gift?

Marisol Macrae

“Bang!” Doors slam as Jack and Jill get out of their red Honda. Jack walks briskly towards the counselling office – shoulders stiff, chin up, eyes fiery. Jill follows 10 feet behind – shoulders limp, head down, eyes vacant. They sit on opposite sides of the room looking away from each other. The tension between them rises until it suffocates. They huff and puff a hundred breaths a minute. For 15 minutes, they utter not a word. Yet their silence screams. It pierces their hearts. It deafens.

Jack and Jill use silence like a weapon to punish each other and to keep the upper hand in their relationship. They also use it to play safe, to hold back their thoughts and feelings behind defensive walls and to stay out of each other’s space for fear of being hurt yet again. As they hide, past and present wounds fester, filling their hearts with unrest.

We live in a culture that drowns this unrest with noise. Telephones ring, pagers beep, computers hum, radios chatter, televisions blare, vehicles roar. Numbed by fear, we let noises shield us – first from ourselves and then from others. We live as old creatures rather than as ones made new by the shed blood of Christ. We refuse to bother with the grace that seeks to free us to trust that we are loved or risk the vulnerability of saying, “I love you.” Rather, we waste time and energy reacting to trivial incidents as if they were attacks. We lose sight of that which truly matters. We become Jack and Jill, and we tumble down the hill of life lonely, broken and scarred.

Jack and Jill sit uncomfortably amidst the silence that separates them. As I wait for their cold war to thaw, my heart cries, “Lord, let me hear their pain. Let them hear each other’s. Redeem this silence.”

Christ uses silence to reveal the depth of His love for us. He remained silent when the chief priests accused Him of many crimes before Pilate (Mark 15:3-5). He did not defend His actions because doing so would have prevented Him from atoning for ours. The seven last words He uttered as He hung dying on the cross stand out because they were framed by the silence of His passion. While Jack and Jill’s silence is driven by fear, Christ’s was empowered by love. As He took on Himself all the pain, scars and sins of humanity, He communed silently with the Father, and upon this silent communion rested His victory over fear, sin and death.

“Be still, and know that I am God,” says Psalm 46:10. I wait some more. “Lord, liberate them from their fear. Free their hearts to trust.” Jack and Jill let angry words fly, blaming words. I listen. I help them hear themselves and each other. Then, they breathe slowly, deeply. Tears flow. Love prevails. At the end of the hour, they say, “I’m sorry.” They smile through their tears, make another appointment and leave.

Knowing that the Father speaks in gentle whispers (1 Kings 19:12), Christ calls us to take time out from external noises and internal unrest. He invites us to order our lives by making room for His gift of silence – small moments as well as extended periods of it. In these silences, we become acutely aware of our humanness. We learn to face our pain, our scars and our sins head on. In these silences, God carries out His purifying work in the recesses of our hearts. Silence moves us from loneliness to solitude, from fearing our aloneness to resting alone in God. Silence teaches us to focus, draws us to His love, allows us to rest in the comforting embrace of His presence and frees us to pray.

Marisol McRae is a counsellor in Surrey, B.C.

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Last modified August 2, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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