When Was the Last Time You Were Quiet?

This week, God’s been putting something back on my heart—something I’ve known for years, but keep forgetting.

It started as I was listening to Matthew Kelly’s book The Three Ordinary Voices of God. (If you’ve never read it, I highly recommend it. Simple. Practical. Real.)

He talks about how God speaks in three ordinary ways. And the importance of silence.

It reminded me of my childhood on the farm. We had chores to do before school. It wasn’t sitting quietly with a Bible, but it was quiet time. Feeding calves. Carrying buckets. No phone. No radio. Just repetitive work and silence. And in that silence, I heard God’s voice—often without even trying.

But here’s the part I’ve been thinking about lately. It wasn’t just the chores that quieted my heart. Sometimes, it was the turmoil I was carrying. The situations that felt hopeless. The pain that made me desperate enough to actually reach out to Him.

I thank God for growing up in a time when farm chores gave me silence. But believe it or not, I also thank Him for the struggles that broke my heart—because without them, I probably wouldn’t have reached beyond myself. Pain has a way of doing that. It forces us to seek something bigger than what we want. It drives us to find hope in Him.

Today, most adults have no silence in their lives. We wake up, scroll our phones, rush to work, run kids everywhere, fill the evening with noise, and crash in bed, just to start it all over again. And its not just the lack of time, its the deafening noise of the world around us. Noise we not only allow, but usually create and welcome into our days. No wonder we can’t hear Him. We can’t even hear our own conscience.

And we pass that on to our kids. We wake them up just in time to rush to school. No quite. No real conversations. No prayer. They never see us sit in silence with God. We never teach them to. How will they learn it?

Is it any wonder our world is anxious, angry, and divided? We have no quiet time for the Prince of Peace.

So here’s my challenge to myself—and maybe to you, too:

Get up earlier.
Sit quietly with your coffee and listen to Him.
Get your kids up early enough to pray with them.
Teach them to find hope and peace in silence with God.

Because at the end of the day, all the scrolling, all the busyness—it won’t give us what silence with Him will.

If you want to go deeper in this, we talk about it in Encounter 2: Walking as a Disciple in our course here:
👉 Walking as a Disciple – Catholics Sharing Jesus

Reflection Questions:

When has pain or hopelessness pushed you to reach out to God in a deeper way?
What would it look like to start your day with silence and Him—before anything else?
How can you teach your children (or those you influence) to find hope in quiet time with God?