Silence

 July 20, 2021

I envy my son. When he prayerfully opens his Bible, he says God never fails to speak some word to his need. I try to listen carefully, but there are times when no matter how much I read, I draw a blank. To be sure, that’s not the fault of Scripture; it’s my own obtuseness that gets in the way. I don’t like coming up empty, but it’s not the end of the world. I find great comfort in the patriarchs of the Old Testament. God told Abraham to leave his ancestral land for a promise. He got to Canaan only to walk into a famine that caused him to keep going all the way to Egypt. God took more than 15 years to fulfill his promise of a son. There is no record of God speaking to Abraham all those years. Moses wandered forty years in the desert of Midian before God spoke to him in the burning bush. Even the prophets who wrote down lengthy oracles often went years without a word from God.

We have the advantage of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, but he often remains silent to our pleas for wisdom, help, and comfort. Jesus himself said that the kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in the ground. God often withdraws so we have to search for him. It’s a good plan; we cannot in any way measure our thirst if we’ve never been thirsty, and we cannot know satisfaction if we’ve never been hungry. So tonight, I wait, knowing that at some point, when I’m ready to hear, God will be waiting to speak.