On Sunday afternoon, I was confined to the house due to a medical issue. Somewhere that afternoon, I decided to go sit by the pool where it was quiet. There’s very little about my life that is quiet. Between all the tasks, meetings, appointments, and drama, I find that quiet is almost unknown. So here I decided to sit and to read.
After a time, I put the book aside and decided to simply bask in the quiet of a Sunday afternoon in the backyard. No family or friends were coming to drop by and my activities were restricted. The telephone had been left inside the house and the computer was downstairs in the home office. And, so, I closed my eyes under the warm sun and listened to the sounds of silence.
But silence is not what I heard. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked repeatedly. Then came the “caw” of a crow from off in the woods. Then I heard the song of a bird. As I listened intently, I began to hear the songs of other birds, perhaps 15 in all .. .all with a different song. A car drove by in front of the house. From the back of the house, I heard the sound of the tires on the asphalt. Then the sound of a truck passing by on a four-lane road I could not see.
There was a low rumble that came closer. I looked up and saw that an airplane with two propellers, one on each wing, was passing by perhaps a half mile, maybe a mile, overhead. Then came the splash from a pool in the neighborhood, followed by the muted sound of children talking and playing. Then, another sound in the sky. An airplane, a jet I presume, flying so high that I could not see it. But hear it, I did.
All of these sounds I did not hear as I was concentrating on reading. Only after the book was laid aside and my eyes closed did I hear the cacophony of sound around me.
I thought, “There shall be silence in the waters of the pool,” so I jumped into the deep end. I heard, of course the sound of the splash. But then, I heard the sound of the bubbles rising to the surface, bubbles created by my entry into the water. As the last bubble ascended, I descended to the bottom of the 9-feet level and expected to hear nothing. But I did hear. I heard the hum of the pump and the slight mechanical buzz of the pool cleaner. Even here, there was no silence.
As I climbed out of the pool, I saw a beautiful black and yellow butterfly fluttering past. It made no sound. Or so it seemed. But I had learned from a learning channel that, if one had a microphone powerful enough, one could hear the sound of a butterfly as its wings flapped against the air.
None of these things had I heard on countless visits to the backyard pool. Because, I suppose, I had been too busy or too focused on other things. But now, I heard, it seemed, sound everywhere. And I heard it because there was sound and because I had time to listen.
“Is God like that?” I wondered. Is His voice all around us all of the time but we do not hear because, for whatever reason, we are not listening?
I believe that is so. I believe that He is omni-everywhere and that He is not silent. I believe that the problem is not that He is not speaking but that we are unwittingly blind and deaf to all that occurring around us.
I believe that the lesson of Sunday afternoon is that, if I am not seeing and I am not hearing, then the fault lies not in the God who is not silent but the self who is not listening.
[David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, Sharpsburg, GA (www.ctkcec.org). He is the bishop of the Mid-South Diocese which consists of Georgia and Tennessee (www.midsouthdiocese.org) and the Associate Endorser for the Department of the Armed Forces, U. S. Military Chaplains, ICCEC. He may contacted at [email protected].]
