To You, Lord, I call;
My rock, do not be deaf to me,
For if You are silent to me,
I will become like those who go down to the pit. Psalm 28:1

Part 1 – Defense Against Despair

It’s been almost a year since my last post.  That was certainly not my intent.  However, life’s demands, responsibilities, and frustrations all played a part in the silence.  While a few have asked about that silence and whether or not I intend to continue to blog (which, Lord willing, is my plan), I seriously doubt that the lack of these blog posts has caused anyone great consternation. Conversely, as David indicates in the passage above, the silence of God is another matter.   

One impediment to writing over the last year has been the weight of God’s apparent silence on a number of issues that I have brought before Him.  The lack of resolution has crushed my spirit. I say apparent because I have learned that what I perceive as silence may not be so.  Like many, the issue may be due to focusing on the problems rather than listening for the answer from God, or being so spiritually distant that His response is not perceived.  Another common hindrance is the tendency to define anything less than God granting a request exactly one’s prayers dictate as a denial of the request, or worse, complete rejection of one’s prayers. Finally, God in fact may be silent while working to accomplish His plans.  In an attempt to “not go down to the pit” as David puts it, I have done my best to do two things:  the first is to review times in the past that God seemed silent and what the corresponding final result revealed; the second is to recall passages in scripture when God seemed to be silent.

I can honestly say that throughout my life, God has lovingly cared for me in so many ways that it would be impossible to cover all of them in a succinct and coherent blog post.  However, I can quickly cover three notable lessons arising from my illness.  First, 30 years ago this spring I began to have trouble digesting food.  Over the course of the next year and a half my weight dropped to 112 pounds with no readily identifiable cause.  During that period, Marie was without permanent employment for roughly nine stressful months.  Despite our prayers, our Lord did not provide a new job.  Years later I looked back and realized that while seemingly unresponsive to our urgent prayers, He was providing contract work that allowed her the flexibility to accompany me to the many diagnostic procedures that I was enduring.  When the bulk of the medical tests were completed, God provided permanent employment.  Again, over the years many have prayed for my physical healing; early on, I prayed for healing or death as I felt this illness was impossible to live with.  At the time, I was so focused on my pain that I did not hear God quietly telling me that He would sustain me while using my illness to improve the condition of my soul and demonstrate His love and faithfulness.  Finally, during my one hour commute to work on September 11, 2001, I spent most of the time in prayer.  I felt that the work I was doing as an accountant was rather futile and asked for guidance.  The events of that day certainly drove those feelings home in the eternal sense.  God was silent.  Consequently, I enrolled in school to become an RN as working in a hospital was the only job I ever had that felt rewarding.  In the fall of 2002, I was once again admitted to the hospital due to severe weakness.  The next summer my health ended the pursuit of a degree in nursing and my accounting career in exchange for a voice to the chronically ill that has hopefully helped others deal with their infirmities.  Through the preparation to facilitate support groups and the training to counsel others, our Lord taught me so much more about His love, faithfulness, and sustaining grace in times of trouble.  God seemed silent and distant, He was, in fact, working to answer my prayers and do something new in my life.  It is life experiences like these that give hope in dark times.  Because God is unchanging and has been my ever present help in the past, I trust that He will help now and in the future…this is my assurance and my conviction.

With respect to scripture, consider the following.  Joseph was in slavery and in prison for 13 years.  There is no indication in the narrative (other than his dreams prior to being sold into slavery) that God revealed His plan or the timing of events to Joseph.  However, during that time, He was preparing Joseph and positioning Him logistically to bring Him before Pharaoh at the right time and elevate Joseph to a ruler in Egypt.  Later God did explain His plan for the Hebrews but was silent for 400 years while they grew from a family into a nation.  At the right time, God broke the silence, freed the Hebrews from slavery, allowed them to plunder Egypt, and destroyed the Egyptian army in a very extraordinary way.  God was also very silent during the intertestamental period, but again broke His silence with the birth of Christ.  Finally, God was silent as our Savior hung on the cross, died and was buried.  However, during that silence, Christ’s work for our salvation was completed and the silence was broken with Christ’s resurrection and ascension. Studying scripture allows us to review the large and small ways in which God communicates His love and faithfulness to His people while addressing their needs..  It teaches us to look and listen so that we see Him at work and hear His voice in the joys and the sorrows that have been ordained for our lives.

Over the course of the last year I have regularly been discouraged by God’s apparent silence and, therefore, regularly recite Psalm 42:11: “Why are you in despair, my soul? And why are you restless within me?  Wait for God, for I will again praise Him for the help of His presence, my God.” It is a reminder that what I feel does not reflect the truth.  More often than not, God is not silent.  Even if He is, He is still at work sustaining, providing, encouraging, and instructing us for He is our loving, faithful and unchanging God.  If you too feel that God is silent or has abandoned you, I would encourage you to go to scripture and review your life in light of God’s word looking for the ways that God has helped and provided in the past in order to restore you hope and confidence in Him.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you.

Will