The worship of silence

Our worship often consists of doing things.

I sometimes introduce church services with these words: ‘let us worship God by singing of his goodness, thanking him for his mercy, depending on him to meet our needs, admitting our wrongs, listening when he speaks, offering ourselves for his service and encouraging one another by our presence and conversation’.

I sometimes end services with these words: ‘let us continue to worship God by going to live lives worthy of our Lord in the wherever, when ever and whatever of our week.

I think that’s right and proper. It has a good balance of the intentionally of gathered worship which is framed within the primary sense of whole-life worship.

However, I also think that God is to be worshipped in the empty space of inaction and silence.

Thus I hear of a devotional routine that includes times of talking to God in prayer but also a time of sitting as still as possible, settling the inner person by focussing on your breathing, saying nothing (whether vocalised or in the mind) and just consciously being still and knowing that he is God and we are not. This is a time to just rest in God and bathe in his presence – much as we might sit in a companionable silence with the dearest of friends.

Of course, this silence is given shape by the surrounding acts to vocalise prayers and read the Bible. Thus it is not a time of egocentric stillness, but one of theocentricity.

So now we can add: ‘let us worship God in our silence and stillness’.