Room for Silence

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Our reading titled, Room for Silence, was written by Cindy Hess Casper. If you like peace and quiet, there's a room in Minneapolis, Minnesota that you'll love. It absorbs 99.99% of all sound. The world-famous anechoic, echo-free chamber of the Orefield Laboratories has been called the quietest place on earth. People who want to experience this soundless space are required to sit down to avoid getting disoriented by the lack of noise, and no one has ever been able to spend more than 45 minutes in the room. Few of us need that much silence, yet we do sometimes long for a little quiet in a loud and busy world. Even the news we watch and the social media we ingest bring a kind of clamorous noise that competes for our attention.

So much of it is infused with words and images that stir up negative emotions. Immersing ourselves in it can easily drown out the voice of God. When the prophet Elijah went to meet God on the mountain of Horeb, he didn't find him in the loud, destructive wind, or in the earthquake, or in the fire. It wasn't until Elijah heard a gentle whisper that he covered his face and ventured out of the cave to meet with the Lord God Almighty. Your spirit may well be craving quiet, but even more so, it may be yearning to hear the voice of God. Find room for silence in your life so you'll never miss God's gentle whisper. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from 1 Kings 19, verses 9-14.

And now they are trying to kill me too. But the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? He replied, I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with a sword.

I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too. Let's pray. Father, in all of the noise of life, please quiet our hearts and our minds so that we can spend uninterrupted time with you today. May we always find rest and renewal as we hear you speak life into us. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening today. My name is Rachelle Traube, and today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.