Suprise in Silence

It was a great suprise last night to be joined by a group of French schoolchildren on a trip at Evening Prayer. Fortunately many of them had such good english they were able to join in and to understand much of the service. I wonder what they made of it as it must seem a little strange to some of them. On enquiring I found that some of them were Roman Catholic (at least nominally) so it provided quite a different experience for them.
The Psalm for the evening was Psalm 139 a beautiful psalm which is one of my favourites (well save the last two verses!) it speaks of the knowledge that God has of us. The Psalmist displays an profound awareness of being surrounded by God and see that God understands their motivation and action. Sometimes in life day to day it is easy to forget that intimate love and knowledge of us that God has. I suppose in many ways it is easy to forget that because life just rolls on and sometimes spiritual awareness just becomes dulled. At the moment I find that I reconnect best with this by very simple silence and opportunity for meditation and reflection. All too often our liturgies seems so crammed with imagery and ideas that there is little pace to pause to stop in worship and just to be. Maybe for those visitors to Evening Prayer last night it marked a time in their day when they had an opportunity to stop and to be suprised. Let's hope so!