The Off Switch

A comedian of my youth once quipped, “Radio [he probably said ‘the wireless’] is a wonderful thing – by turning a single knob you can have complete silence!”  The point of his joke was, of course, the fact that, even after the initial surge of enthusiasm for broadcasting had subsided, the wireless was still very popular: everyone stopped their conversation when it was turned on, in order to listen to the programme.

However, the opposite view of this old saw also holds a somewhat obvious truth.  In other words, silence can be obtained by switching the radio (or other music/noise machine) OFF.  Wherever we go nowadays, it seems, we are bombarded by sound.  Background music is found in many workplaces, shops, motorway service stations and so on.  It seems we can only be really quiet in the depth of the countryside – and that is becoming more and more scarce!

Quite apart from the potential for damage to our ears, constant sound around us has the further property of exclusion – it cuts us off from the distraction of our surroundings.  Students today find this useful when revising.  By the same token, unending music can mask important things, too.  We can the more easily shut out unwelcome thoughts, challenges we aren’t yet ready to face, and so on.  And it can separate us from God.

How often, I wonder, does the pressure of what St Paul describes as ‘worldly things’ deter us from seeking time with God?  We’re only just out of the Christmas season; I have found it useful in recent years to think of all the glitz and razzamatazz that goes on in the shops – and now, of course, on line as well – as ‘Xmas’, leaving the word ‘Christmas’ for the real thing, the celebration of God coming to earth in the form of a tiny and vulnerable baby and living the life of a human being.  Somehow, this helps to counteract the potential for the frills, however sacred the origins of some of them, to shut out the real message.

In our quest for silence are we simply yearning for the impossible, trying to turn back the clock to a past age?  I think not.  Only if we overcome all the distractions can we hear again in our hearts the message the angels sang over those hillsides long ago: “good news … of great joy … for all people”  It was true at Christmas and it’s true every day of the year. 

Remember the off switch: use it at least once every day, and allow God to enrich your life.