The Sound of Silence
The Sound of Silence: A Reflection
“Indeed, these are but the outer fringes of His ways! How faint is the whisper we hear of Him! But who can understand the thunder of His power?” (Job 26:14)
Ask Paul Simon what he was thinking when he wrote The Sound of Silence, and you’ll get a story different from how I perceive it. Still, I believe that somewhere deep inside, this expression touches something in him too. For me, it has always struck a deep chord, but not in the usual way. I don’t hear despair or alienation. I hear a sacred invitation to embrace silence as the space where God speaks most clearly.
Silence is not a void or emptiness. It’s a blank page, a necessary canvas without which no creation or revelation can take form.
We live in a world flooded with noise. Nature’s sounds are rare amidst the constant hum: people talking, modern clatter once through Walkmans, then MP3 players, and now endless Spotify playlists. Phone conversations aren’t confined to homes, they’re everywhere. And how can we think with the nonstop ping of smartphone notifications?
This clamor drowns out the kol demama daka, the “still small voice” of 1 Kings 19:12. God revealed Himself to Elijah not in the wind, fire, or earthquake, but in quiet. Silence is not absence but sacred presence. It connects us to God’s patience, inviting us to rest in being rather than doing.
Yet we often run from stillness. Are we afraid of what we might find there? Are we willing to pause and hear God’s whisper, or do we cling to noise and distractions that drown Him out? The Sound of Silence calls us to enter that sacred quiet, where God’s words can take root.
In that silence, we are not seeking emptiness but creating sanctuary. Freed from the distractions of modern life, we can truly listen for God’s voice and find the courage to let it write itself on the clean page of our soul.
Hello Darkness, My Old Friend
Darkness is not despair. It is the womb of stillness, the pre-creation space where “the Spirit of God hovered over the deep” (Genesis 1:2). In silence, darkness becomes a sanctuary, not a threat. The speaker enters it with reverence, not fear.
Darkness is the primordial canvas where God’s voice first stirred the void. In returning to silence, we return to the Source. This is the sacred night, the stillness before revelation.
“God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light. God saw that the light was good and separated the light from the darkness.” (Genesis 1:3–4)
Because a vision softly creeping
The vision enters gently, in stillness, as the world’s noise fades. In that quiet, the soul becomes fertile ground for divine truth. Seeds are planted that endure, not with a shout but with the whisper of God.
The Intrusion of Neon Light
In restless dreams, the speaker walks alone through narrow streets beneath the faint halo of a streetlamp. He turns his collar to the cold and damp, longing for the warmth of God, but finds only silence.
Then, a flash of neon light (a symbol of modernity) pierces the darkness. It mimics revelation but offers only surface clarity. It blinds rather than guides, distracting from the divine.
This artificial light splits the sacred stillness, replacing God’s whisper with shallow brilliance. It seduces with false answers and cheap enlightenment.
A Quiet Multitude
In that light, the speaker sees ten thousand people, maybe more, not lost in noise but inwardly illumined. Each stands alone in quiet, not doing, just being. He feels their sacred stillness and yearns to join.
They are:
No one dares disturb this holy silence. God’s voice reigns, unshaken by worldly noise. In their being, the speaker finds a compass for his longing soul.
The Cry
“Fools,” said I, “you do not know / Silence like a cancer grows…“
Is this a cry from wisdom or deception? A prophetic warning, or a plea to resist God’s intrusion?
Perhaps it warns that sacred silence is being drowned out, replaced by artificial calm, full of neon lights and endless doing. The speaker pleads:
“Hear my words that I might teach you / Take my arms that I might reach you”
He invites them to hold God’s hand, to hear the still small voice. But his words fall like silent raindrops, unheard amid distraction.
Or perhaps this is the voice of distraction itself, urging us not to listen, not to stop, not to hear God’s whisper:
“Just kicking down the cobblestones / Looking for fun and feelin’ groovy”
Still, God’s word will not remain silent forever:
“The LORD will then be king over all the earth. In that day the LORD will be seen as one with a single name.” (Zechariah 14:9)
The Neon God and the Whisper of the Prophets
The people bow and pray to the neon god they have made, a false deity flashing with distraction, feeding on endless doing and shallow pleasures. But even there, in that place of noise and false light, the words of the prophets still appear. The sign may be neon, artificial and glowing, designed to draw attention without depth. Still, the message it carries is real. This is the irony: truth can appear even through the very tools that usually drown it out.
God’s voice is not limited to holy places or quiet moments. Sometimes He chooses the most unlikely spaces to speak, such as subway walls, tenement halls, or bright signs in forgotten corners of the city. The neon becomes part of the message, both a rebuke and a call. The prophets write where the people are looking, turning the symbols of distraction into signs that warn, awaken, and remind. Do not ignore them. Be humble, and listen.
And the sign said, “The words of the prophets