Today's gospel reading recounts Philip's asking Jesus "Show us the Father." How often do we ask the same question of Jesus and the Holy Spirit? Most likely more than we imagine. There are often times in each day when we directly life up our hearts and minds to God with a prayer for guidance or thanksgiving. The sunrises, the sunsets or seeing acts of kindness or hearing of noble deeds by another human being --- these are for many moments of lifting the mind and heart to God. These are the moments when we can find an answer to Philip's request.
For a moment let us step aside form Philip and his searching and our searching. Let me recall the written words of a noted French composer, Claude Debussy. Describing the composition process in music, he said "Music is the silence between the notes." What an insight that has helped so many even beyond the music composition world. It is the pause between two notes that makes the musical work of art possible.
Debussy's insight also helps us in our search for God. We have been taught by so many people of as many backgrounds that silence is important if we want to talk with God, if we want to engage him in conversation. Today we live in a world of noise. Surely there is music of every genre. There is tv speaking to us 24/7 if we allow it. There are jet planes roaring above us if we live near an airport. Our city streets are a cacophony of sounds: horns, engines, sirens, screeching brakes. But there are quiet moments, too, on a country road, on the streets in a housing development, in a park. Most libraries offer silence along with the sacred silence of a chapel or a church or a quiet place in our homes. Even in our daily experience of noise there are the moments between the horns, the sirens, the loud music, even the noise of innocent young children playing in a school yard.
So, too, our search for God is found in the quiet, noiseless exercise of meeting God in prayer. Prayer is that treasured moment between the notes of our active days. It is in the moment when we give serious effort to silence, to the space between the notes of noise on the written musical composition of our lives. To discover God today we must work to find the space between the notes --- the moments when sunrises or sunsets let us hear God speak, when the goodness of others let us hear God-talk. Psalm 65:7 helps us to know that God will do his part in our searching to find him in silence. He will speak to us between the noises of our lives. "You still the roaring of the seas, the roaring of the waves, and the tumult of the peoples."
In the spaces between the noises God will speak to us. He will make known what we truly need to hear. This is the power between the notes, the power of silence. What is that power? Simply this: the voice of God!
