As part of my morning prayer and meditation, I set aside a few minutes, sit quietly, and listen….. just in case God has something to say to me. I don’t hear a physical voice, but, sometimes an idea comes to me. Sometimes an entire post comes to me……………straight out of the blue. Sometimes, however, there is nothing. I invite God to speak…..and there is nothing. I wonder what in the world I will say this week. I wonder what God is up to. Where did he go? I worry that I will mess up and let everybody down……. that I will come up with something that comes from some source other than God.
Then it occurred to me. This probably happens to all of us. Some situation comes up in our life……..we need some guidance……..we turn to God……..and nothing happens.
Does this mean that God doesn’t hear…….that he doesn’t care……or worse….. that he doesn’t exist? I hear this a lot. Somebody is in crisis…..they pray…… they don’t get the response that they expected…….and they reject God.
I don’t know what God is up to…….when he is silent.
But I do know this.
God loves me. Not with a generic “one size fits all” kind of love…..but with a parental love that is specific to me. He is fully aware of my strengths…….and of my failures……my sin.
And he loves me……..still.
When was a child, my dad left the house and went to work…..seven days a week………10 to 12 hours a day. I missed his presence…….often I resented his absence…… sometimes I still do……swim meets that he didn’t attend…….the boy scout functions that he rarely attended. I miss the conversations that we didn’t have. But, I never doubted that he was hard at work taking care of me.
So……… what does it mean……. when God is silent?
It means that……just like my dad……he is hard at work taking care of me…… taking care of you…….even in his silence……even though I can’t see or hear him.
When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about a half an hour.
John, NIV
God didn’t speak to the prophets of the Old Testament for 400 years………then he sent us Jesus.
God is sometimes silent……..just before he does something big.
This calls for confidence in God’s love. It calls for trust that he cares and will make things right…….on his terms and in his good time. It calls for patience.