By Amy Munroe
Last spring, I was noticing that my world felt a bit out of control. All the news I listened to was negative, work had slowed down due to covid, we were not able to be with the ones we loved, and life was not ‘normal’. I needed something to help me through this. Of course, I would turn to prayer and my faith, and in my prayer time, I realized I needed silence and solitude.
In my teen years, I had a pastor who changed my view on life (thank you, Rev Hal Brady - https://www.facebook.com/Hal-Brady-Ministries-226696000692229/). He made my Christian faith come alive for me and allowed me to see how all that ‘history’ in the bible impacted my life today. He is a very wise man and once said “silence is the furnace of transformation”. Let that sink in for a minute. Read that again. Pretty impactful, would you agree? But how often do we really let silence into our lives?
Silence allows you to listen to your inner being. Silence allows you to let your mind wander and reveal different thoughts and ideas. Silence allows us to listen to God and focus our life on what it should be, not what culture or the world tells us it should be. Turning off the TV news and allowing no radio or online news/chatter will impact your life in so many ways. We need to focus on the good right now, focus on our blessings.
Turn off all your devices, walk away from the computer, and just be. Be by yourself and settle in the silence. In that rest, pray and reflect. In that rest, your brain has a chance to do what it does best…ponder new things, allow for answers to our questions, and allow yourself to just be in the moment.