Do you remember the sound of silence?
Not fake silence.
Not “I turned the TV down” silence.
Not “my phone is on the charger across the room but I’m still thinking about it” silence.
I mean the old silence.
The kind you stumbled into as a child when you got up early enough to catch Mom and Dad already sitting at the kitchen table. Coffee steaming. Robes and slippers. Barely any words at all.
And yet somehow… they were saying everything.
It wasn’t awkward.
It wasn’t empty.
It was warm.
It was safe.
It was like a blanket wrapped around the whole room.
They knew each other.
They didn’t have to perform.
They didn’t have to fill every crack in the air with noise.
Just quiet.
And as a kid, you didn’t have words for it. You just knew it felt… grown up. Sacred, even. Like peace had taken a seat at the table before you got there.
Then life happened.
Hormones. Hurry. Youth. Noise.
Video games. Television. Deadlines. Responsibilities.
And eventually smartphones.
Now the first thing many of us reach for in the morning is not peace.
Not prayer.
Not stillness.
It’s the screen.
Before our feet hit the floor, our minds are already being dragged through notifications, headlines, tragedies, opinions, texts, reels, alerts, and digital bait hanging from a thousand shiny hooks.
We fill every empty second.
Every pause gets medicated with noise.
It started innocently enough.
“You’ve got mail.”
Now it has become a way of life.
Buzz.
Beep.
Scroll.
Swipe.
Refresh.
Repeat.
And somewhere along the way, silence got buried alive.
Remember those old westerns? Men sitting in stillness before they spoke. Long pauses. A circle. A fire. A peace pipe. Nobody panicking because nobody was talking. Nobody reaching for a device to rescue them from the discomfort of a quiet moment.
They understood something we have forgotten:
Silence is not the enemy.
Silence is where your soul catches up with your body.
Silence is where the fog begins to lift.
Silence is where you realize how addicted you really are to distraction.
And silence is where many of us hear God again.
“Be still, and know that I am God.”
That verse hits a little harder when you realize how hard it is for modern people to be still for even five minutes.
We say we want peace, but we keep reaching for panic.
We say we want God, but we keep feeding on noise.
We say we want rest, but we keep sleeping with our distractions in our hands.
So here’s the challenge:
Take a Sabbath from the screen.
Turn it off.
Not down.
Not silent mode.
Off.
Step away from the machine that keeps nibbling at your mind all day long.
At first, you’ll feel it.
You’ll twitch for it.
You’ll wonder what you’re missing.
Who texted.
Who posted.
What happened.
What emergency is unfolding without your supervision.
And then you’ll discover something shocking:
The world keeps spinning without you touching your phone.
And maybe, just maybe, in that quiet, you’ll find something ancient waiting on you.
A lost friend.
A forgotten peace.
The echo of childhood mornings.
The heartbeat of God in the stillness.
I remember those mornings with Mom and Dad. No newspaper in Dad’s hands yet. No rush. No performance. No noise. Just the kind of quiet that said more than words ever could.
And now, even as I post this on the very device that fights against everything I’m saying, I can feel the pull already. Notifications. Messages. News. Devotions. Alerts. The thousand distractions waiting to swallow the moment whole.
But somewhere behind all that noise…
there is still a silence worth finding.
And I think a lot of us are starving for it.
If this hit home, pause today. Even for a little while. Put the phone down. Sit in the quiet. Let your soul breathe again.
You may just hear what the noise has been trying to drown out.