The Silence Before Sound

I'm a musician and sound engineer, and I'm obsessed with this image: when the seventh seal is opened, there's silence for about half an hour.

After all the noise and movement and vision, silence. Not emptiness. Not absence. Just silence. Everything paused. Waiting.

I've been building my music in this season to include silence. Not as absence but as presence. As the moment where something is about to be said that requires listening.

We're so deafened by constant noise that we've forgotten silence is where listening happens. That half-hour of silence in Revelation - that's not a pause in the action. That's the most pregnant moment. That's where everything's about to change.