Clay in the Hands

Have you ever noticed how suffocating silence can be? Silence can get pretty loud. If you are like me, you get in the car and turn on the stereo. You get to your office and turn on the iTunes or Pandora. If you are exercising, you are very likely to have wires connecting your ears to your phone or iPod.

We don’t do very well with silence. It scares us. Maybe because in silence we are forced to be alone with ourselves – alone with our thoughts. We have grown so accustomed to noise that we don’t know how to act in silence. We don’t know what to think. We struggle with how to feel.

But I have found that when I am worn out or stressed out, silence can be very important. We get so busy with our routine that it can become more about going through the motions. Our service to God and others becomes more of an obligation and less of a calling.

I was reminded of something very important today in some of my reading. If you have been around Clay In The Hands for long, you know that one of my favorite Christian thinkers is Thomas Merton. Merton said this: “When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively, no distraction. My whole life becomes a prayer.”

“My whole life becomes a prayer.” I love that statement. I am not sure I can say that about my life very often. But isn’t that how it should be? I believe when we set aside the distractions and keep our focus on God and God’s holiness, then our lives become a prayer and everything we do becomes worship.

Slow down and worship with passion today!