Learning to Discern in Silence
One of the quiet gifts of silence is discernment—the ability to recognize what is simply noise and what may be invitation. Distraction and gift often feel the same when they first appear. The difference is discovered not in panic, but in patience. Silence teaches us how to notice, how to trust, and how to listen more deeply.
When you enter stillness, thoughts will rise. A shopping list, a memory, a sudden ache in the hip. At first, it is tempting to label them all as distractions. But not everything that surfaces is meant to be dismissed. Sometimes the shopping list is simply clutter. Sometimes it is the Spirit nudging you to remember what you’ve forgotten. Discernment grows as you practice trusting what arises—not rushing to judgment, but staying long enough to ask, Why is this here?
This is especially tender if you’ve known trauma. Disruption can fracture your trust in yourself, leaving you uncertain of your own senses, suspicious of your own inner knowing. Silence becomes a way back. Thirty seconds, two minutes, half an hour—all of it is rehearsal in befriending yourself. You begin to notice patterns: Oh, when anxiety comes, I usually do this. When joy rises, I lean that way. When sorrow surfaces, I pull back. These observations are not trivial; they are the baseline of discernment.
Before we master strategies or adopt definitions, we need this simple practice of becoming acquainted with ourselves. Silence says: Know who you are in anger, in delight, in fear, in rest. This knowing becomes the soil where discernment grows. It is not about forcing answers, but about learning to trust that God meets you through your senses, through awareness, through the subtle wisdom of noticing.
Practice
Choose a quiet moment and set a timer for 5 minutes.
As thoughts, feelings, or sensations arise, pause before labeling them “distraction.”
Ask gently: Is there anything for me here? Then let it be.
Jot down one or two things you noticed—without trying to solve or explain them.
Challenge
For three days in a row, take 2–5 minutes of silence and keep a small “discernment log.” Capture just one thing that surfaced each time. At the end of three days, look back. Do you see a pattern? A theme? A repeated nudge?
Reflection Questions
What came up most often in silence—noise or nudges?
Where do you find it hardest to trust your own noticing?
How might befriending yourself be the first step in learning to discern the voice of God more clearly?
The Heartbeat of Stillness
Teaching
So often we imagine silence as a contest: who can sit longest, who can be quietest, who can endure without moving. But that is not the gospel of silence. Every nervous system tells a different story. For some, the hum of lights, the constant drone of TV or radio, or the grip of endless devices isn’t laziness—it’s survival. Stillness once meant danger. Silence once signaled threat. If this is you, beginning with thirty seconds isn’t weakness; it is kindness. The practice was never about perfect posture or shutting your mouth tight—it was always about the fruit. The point of stillness is not to conform your body into a rigid mold but to meet God in the reality of who you are, as you are. You cannot fail at silence. You cannot fail at spiritual practice. The measure is not how long you sit without moving, but whether the heartbeat of the practice leads you deeper into Presence. Even pacing the room, even speaking aloud, you may be more still in soul than you’ve ever been sitting stiff in a chair. The gift is not in outward conformity but in inward freedom—the space to discover that you are already God’s beloved, already the expert in your own being, already woven together with brilliance. Stillness is not about being less yourself, but becoming more fully who you are.
Practice
Set a timer for just 30 seconds. Allow yourself to choose the posture that feels most kind—sitting, standing, pacing, even walking slowly.
With each breath, notice one simple thing: the press of your feet, the rhythm of your breath, or the sound in the room.
Let yourself be here, without judgment.
Challenge
Over the next week, experiment with practicing silence in different states of being. Try it once seated, once while walking, once while doing something ordinary (washing dishes, folding laundry). Notice: where do you feel most able to meet stillness?
Reflection Questions
What assumptions have you carried about what “counts” as silence?
How might reframing silence as fruit, not performance, free you?
Where in your life right now could thirty seconds of gentle stillness make space for God’s Presence to meet you?
Returning with Silence
You have walked through these doorways—thirty seconds of quiet, the slow grounding of the body, the rising noise of the mind, the discernment of what is distraction and what is gift, the fruit of stillness that does not depend on posture or performance. None of this has been about mastery. All of it has been about Presence.
Start small, and be kind to yourself. Thirty seconds can change the cadence of a day. Five minutes can reset the nervous system. Thirty minutes can feel like a baptism into something steadier than you thought possible. And one hour—one hour of allowing silence to hold you—can feel like entering the deep water where God has been waiting all along.
The invitation is not to measure yourself against anyone else. The invitation is to trust that God meets you in the life you already carry, in the body you already inhabit, in the heart that already beats within you. Silence is not a prize for the strong; it is a gift for the weary, the distracted, the ordinary. It is not escape, but return.
So take these practices with you. Let them become companions in kitchens, in traffic, in restless nights and joyful mornings. Let them teach you to breathe again, to listen again, to live more fully the life that is already yours.
Benediction
May the quiet you have touched here follow you home.
May thirty seconds stretch into minutes,
and minutes into hours,
not as a burden but as a gift.
May you discover in silence not emptiness but Presence,
not absence but God’s nearness,
not a test of strength but a deep well of grace.
And may you carry this stillness into the noise of the world—
as a steady breath,
as a calm heart,
as a witness to the One who meets us
in the hush beneath every sound.
Go in silence,
and find yourself held.