There is a particular kind of quiet that settles in after the big moment.
After graduation.
After the job offer.
After the wedding.
After the baby arrives.
After the Christmas decorations come down.
When the noise fades, and the question lingers: Now what?
That “now what?” question is at the heart of our book Red Letter Challenge. We first wrote that book as a 40-day journey designed to help people listen to Jesus and live His words when life feels quiet, confusing, or uncertain.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that kind of silence lately: what it reveals and what it might be inviting us to hear.
One of the most reliable ways to gauge a culture’s spiritual temperature is to pay attention to its art and music. Stories tend to surface long before we have language for what we’re feeling, which is why a film from 1967 still feels painfully current.
The Graduate tells the story of Benjamin Braddock, a young man fresh out of college, surrounded by expectations and completely unsure of what comes next. Everyone wants answers from him: career plans, purpose, direction, but he has none. He drifts. He resists the life laid out before him. He’s searching for meaning without knowing where to find it.
By the end of the film, he thinks he’s found the answer in love. In one dramatic, unforgettable moment, Benjamin interrupts a wedding, the girl runs away with him, and together they escape. It looks like a perfect Hollywood ending.
But the brilliance of the film isn’t the escape. It’s what happens after.
In the final scene, Benjamin and Elaine sit in the back of a bus, riding off into their future. The camera lingers longer than expected. At first, they’re smiling. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, the smiles fade. The acting drops away. They don’t look relieved or joyful. They look uncertain. Quiet. Unsure of what comes next.
And underneath it all, Simon and Garfunkel begin to sing:
Hello darkness, my old friend.
That moment captures something dialogue never could. Because life has a way of leading us into the silence after the event happens that we thought would solve everything.
Paul Simon wrote The Sound of Silence after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He later said he attempted to express the loneliness and spiritual emptiness he sensed all around him. He was right.
So was the director of The Graduate.
We live in a society surrounded by noise and starved for connection. Read a couple of stanzas from “The Sound of Silence.”
“People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening.”
Those words feel just as accurate now as they did decades ago. We are surrounded by podcasts, playlists, posts, and opinions. Endless sound. Endless commentary. And yet, so much of it feels hollow.
So we look for something to worship. Here’s a couple more lines from ” The Sound of Silence:
“And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made…”
You’re getting an image of humanity worshiping the glow of its own making: screens, success, self, while remaining profoundly lonely. A world that has forgotten how to hear. Not just one another, but God Himself.
Silence, in Scripture, often represents absence or confusion. The Bible itself opens in darkness and quiet. But it doesn’t stay there.
“And God said, ‘Let there be light.’”
Before there was creation, there was communication.
Before there was form, there was a voice.
The first thing we learn about God is that He speaks life into the void.
And when humanity wandered back into the noise—when we stopped listening—God spoke again. Through prophets and poets. Through whispers and winds. Through burning bushes and broken hearts.
Then came what Scripture often calls the silent years: four hundred years between the Old and New Testaments. No prophets. No new revelation. Just waiting.
Until finally, God spoke again. This time, not just through words, but through a person.
“In the past God spoke through the prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.” (Hebrews 1:1–2)
Jesus is the Word made flesh. The voice of God wrapped in skin. The silence was shattered.
Paul tells Timothy:
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
(2 Timothy 3:16–17)
I love that phrase: God-breathed.
The same breath that hovered over the waters in Genesis…
The same breath that filled Adam’s lungs…
The same breath that brought dry bones to life in Ezekiel…
Is the breath behind the words of Scripture.
Scripture isn’t just ink on paper. It’s oxygen for the soul. It’s God speaking into our silence.
And Paul adds something easy to miss: it’s useful.
Scripture isn’t abstract or irrelevant.
It’s useful. It does something.
That’s the same conviction behind Red Letter Living books like Being Challenge and Forgiving Challenge. Followers of Jesus are challenged to learn that Scripture doesn’t just inform, it forms us for everyday life.
Every time you open your Bible, God exhales. And your spirit inhales.
That’s what we’ve tried to build into every Red Letter book. It’s not just more content to consume; they also contain practices that help Scripture move from the page into real life. They’re designed to be useful, to help you listen, respond, and live out the words of Jesus when life feels quiet, confusing, or overwhelming.
But let’s be honest, sometimes silence feels safer. It’s easier to scroll than to listen. It’s easier to fill the space with podcasts than with prayer. It’s easier to talk about God than to be still before Him.
Sometimes, we don’t want God to speak because we already sense what He’ll say.
There was a season when I was completely burned out. Zach and I had planted a church in Florida and we were five years into it. He was preaching multiple services on Sunday. I was running the kids’ ministry each week. We were exhausted.
But instead of slowing down, I just turned up the volume on everything. More work. More ministry. More noise. More distractions. Silence felt uncomfortable. But one afternoon, sitting alone in my car with no music playing, I finally stopped. And in that quiet, I sensed Him whisper, “You can’t hear Me when you keep turning on all this noise.”
The Word of God doesn’t compete with noise, but you can’t really hear it if it’s always chaotic and noisy around you. The Bible allows quiet and then gives hope.
I can’t think of a more “now what?” time of year than right now in January. The hoopla of the holidays is over. We are still in the season of short days. It’s dark and quiet. Everything is bare. And we get silence.
That “Now what?” question is one of the reasons we’ve created Red Letter resources; to help people slow down long enough to listen again. Not to rush past the silence, but to meet God in it.
You know that silence comes in many forms. The silence after a hard conversation with someone you’ve poured into. The silence when you wonder if what you’re doing is making any difference. The silence of waiting for clarity, for calling, for a breakthrough.
And what’s the world’s answer to silence? We get a new laundry list for the following year.
I don’t know about you. But January is always an empty, quiet month for me where I feel confused, uncertain, and left searching for meaning in motion.
And while The Sound of Silence captures our despair, the Scriptures carry our deliverance. The silence of Saturday came before the miracle of Sunday. But here’s the truth: In every silence, God is still speaking.
If the silence you’re sitting in feels heavy or uncertain, you don’t have to navigate it alone. God is still speaking. The first step is simply to open His Word and make space to listen.
He is still equipping you, breathing through His Word, filling you with everything you need for every good work. You don’t have to manufacture meaning. You don’t have to chase noise to feel alive.
Let’s go back to that bus for a moment. Benjamin and Elaine sit in the back, unsure, the weight of what’s next settling in. The world fades into silence. That’s where many people live, riding off into uncertainty, surrounded by the noise of a thousand opinions but unsure what’s real.
But what if that moment, the sound of silence, wasn’t an ending, but an opening?
What if, in that quiet, there’s a voice?
God’s voice that says:
“I made you. I love you. I have something useful for you.”
When Simon and Garfunkel sang about the sound of silence, they captured the ache of humanity. When Paul wrote about the Word of God, he gave us the answer.
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful… so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16–17
