Day 249
Song of Solomon 1:1-4:16; 2 Corinthians 8:16-24; Psalm 50:1-23; Proverbs 22:22-23
The Silence of God
“When you did these things and I kept silent… you thought I was exactly you…” (Psalm 50:21). In graduate school, I went through one of the darkest nights of the soul, so dark that at times I just wanted to denounce the faith. Divine explanations were clashing with daily experiences, and they just did not seem to mesh or reconcile no matter what I did, read, or prayed.
I remember one of my professors pointing me to the meditations of Blaise Pascal, and his writings on the Silence of God. Saying that our God is a God who speaks, but He is also a God who is silent… and He alone reserves the right to choose either. I remember so many nights of agony, just wondering why He was being so silent when my doubts were screaming so loudly. I had confused His silence with my silence, or rather, with my experience of silence.
You see, life had taught me that silence was what manipulative people did to get you to love them or do what they want you to do. Life had taught me that silence was what insecure people did when you weren’t performing the way they needed you to, and life had taught me silence meant abandonment. But that is not the silence of God… His silence is clever, loving, wise, patient, brilliant, purposeful, and redemptive.
Pascal had a way of teaching me to “doubt my doubts,” to remember that my doubts were just that—doubts! They were not divine, they were not infallible, they were not inspired, they were not inerrant. They were as tainted as a cult trying to evangelize! So in the silence, I could doubt the doubts and cling to the Word, cling to the thing that was perfect and divine, and weather the storm.
I don’t know where you are in this season of life, but let me encourage you that He is not like us… He is brilliant and mysterious. His silence is for a reason. If He never spoke again, if He never gave you anything again, would you trust Him? I had to learn the hard way that the Father was pursuing me through silence to make me stand in the road and scream, “I trust you even if you never speak, move, or give me anything ever again.” It was one of the most eye-opening seasons in my faith journey with Christ, and if you find yourself there, hang on… He’s not done, and He is not like us.
Chad Turner