Having spent a large chunk of time in doctors’ waiting rooms, I’ve come to a conclusion: our society is noisy. TVs and radios dominate waiting areas – with mostly annoying programming – and make it nearly impossible to think. I found myself wishing I owned an mp3 player to drown it all out. (Seems ironic – drowning out noise with more noise.)

It’s almost as if silence is a disease and we fear exposure.

When I worked as a church organist, there were times when a communion hymn would end before communion did. With not enough time to start a new hymn, there would be a few minutes of silence in the church and the congregation’s reaction was predictable: uncomfortable restlessness. Coughing and fidgeting, the worshipers would create their own noise in the absence of mine.

As a new organist, I would feel guilty about those moments. I didn’t want people feeling uncomfortable during worship and surely I wasn’t doing my job if I wasn’t making some sort of racket. But as I became more experienced, I realized an occasional silence in worship is a good thing. How else can we hear God’s voice unless we are quiet first?

Music has moments of silence; we call them rests. And just as rests keep notes from running amok, moments of silence keep us in sync.

Enjoy a quiet moment today.