Is God silent? That is a question that many have pondered. . .
In Lent it can feel like a question whose answer is a combination of affirmation and resignation. We can hear the response to this question in this way: “Yes God is silent at times,” and those words can cause us to bow our heads in resignation. Our self-awareness as Christians provides the perspective that God is not a magical genie who comes when called every time but we wish that we could feel God with us at every moment of life. When we don’t the temptation is to wonder if we have failed as Christians.
For when we wonder about God’s silence or stillness in our time of need, we are considering more deeply whether God values us enough to listen? We ask questions like: do we possess enough value to merit God’s movement in our lives? Are we worth God speaking to us?
Are our issues, our struggles, our inability to pray, our inability to commune with God, our struggles to grow in our faith walk, a direct representation that God is far off from us? . . . God is not listening to us . . . Not answering us . . . Not caring for our hearts.
Now of course we do not agree with that sentiment, publicly. I am sure that as you read those words in your heart you affirmed that God hears you when you pray. You might have even remembered a passage of scripture that says that God listens to His children when we cry out. Likely you also affirmed, just as vehemently, that God loves you enough to not only send Jesus to die for your sins, but God loves you enough to hear your silent cries. God’s love abounds. . . at least in our minds.
And yet, each of us knows a time when God appeared silent when we needed His guidance. We needed God’s hand to lead us onward; God’s finger to point us in the right path. Yet that guidance seemed far off and missing.
If you have wondered if God is silent as we walk through Lent together, then I offer you the words of Charles Spurgeon. In his morning devotional, Morning by Morning, he wrote these words for us:
"No promise is of private interpretation. Whatever God has said to any one saint, he has said to all. When he opens a well for one, it is that all may drink. When he openeth a granary-door to give out food, there may be some one starving man who is the occasion of its being opened, but all hungry saints may come and feed too. Whether he gave the word to Abraham or to Moses, matters not, O believer; he has given it to thee as one of the covenanted seed. There is not a high blessing too lofty for thee, nor a wide mercy too extensive for thee. Lift up now thine eyes to the north and to the south, to the east and to the west, for all this is thine. Climb to Pisgah’s top, and view the utmost limit of the divine promise, for the land is all thine own. There is not a brook of living water of which thou mayst not drink. If the land floweth with milk and honey, eat the honey and drink the milk, for both are thine."
The immenseness of God. The provision of God. The voice of God. They are active and working for you. Yes it can feel like God is silent when we need His presence the most. But when those times come, and we know that they will, can Sprugeon’s words remind us that heavenly provision is all around us? Can we remember that no matter how cold the winter gets, or how cold and dry our hearts feel, or how separate we might be from each other physically, God’s blessings are numerous and abundant?
Is God silent? I suspect that depends on your frame of reference. . .
Blessings
Rev. Derek
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