When God Goes Silent.

What do you do when the world goes silent?For most of us we can’t answer that question because we avoid silence like the plague. I know that is my story.

On a walk to clear my mind I have to have the sound of a playlist in my ear.

At night, I have to have the fan going because silence while I sleep is terrifying. 

At a coffee shop with a friend I search for words because sitting in silence feels too awkward.

If I were a betting man, I’d say that you, too, have your struggles with silence. But this struggle isn’t a new one. For all of history, people have wrestled with silence. And one silence has touched all of humanity, and that’s the silence we experience from God. 

David cried out in the opening line of Psalm 13,

 “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” Psalms 13:1

And I imagine that the disciples would have been praying this prayer from David on Saturday morning as they tried to make sense of what just happened the day before. The man they had come to believe to be the messiah, and given their lives to following, had just suffered a brutal death at the hands of the religious rulers and Rome. 

As the sun rose that morning, and their eyes, tired from crying, opened to a new day, I imagine them saying, “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?”.

A question that, if asked a few days earlier, would receive a response from their Lord, but now seems to go only as far as the ceiling.

Silence. 

There is no answer on the day after the crucifixion. Only silence.

As if to mock the faith that these men had. And in our lives, silence seems to mock us, too.  Trials, suffering, and disappointment assault us from every direction, sucking the life from us. And in these moments, we too look to heaven, hoping to hear something from God, and all we hear is nothing. 

We want God to speak again.

We want him to show us the way.

We want him to shine the light of his presence on us. 

And yet what fills the room isn’t God’s beautiful voice, but silence.

But I want to suggest that this silence isn’t God’s abandonment of you. If you believe in Jesus and are adopted into his family, He has not left you, nor is his silence punishment. It’s formative. Silence is sovereignly used by God to form his people into a people who trust Him even when they can’t trace his voice. 

Listen to what Isaiah says about Israel’s doubt and feelings about God’s silence. 

“Zion says, “The Lord has abandoned me; the Lord has forgotten me! “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the child of her womb? Even if they forget, yet I will not forget you. Look, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.” Isaiah 49:14-16 

The truth is that God can’t forget you. His covenant commitment is permanent because he is an eternally faithful God. In the silence,  God forms us into a people who trust this never forgetting character. 

When his voice is absent, his promises rang out. 

When the room goes deaf, remember and believe what God said. 

This is what the disciples had on that Saturday after the death of Jesus. 

They had their experiences with him. 

They had his work in their life. 

They had his life giving words.

They had his past faithfulness to continue to speak to them while they waited on a word from heaven. 

And so do you. 

God has not forgotten you.

His silence is not evidence of his abandonment of you.

When he stops talking, it isn’t to punish you, it’s to form you. 

So this Saturday, between the death of Jesus and his resurrection, use this silence to rehearse who God is to you. 

Who has he said he is? 

How does he respond to the prayers of his people throughout scripture? 

How might I not truly believe him or his character?

Silence gives space to process our internal life and get the truth deep down in our bones. Don’t run away from the silence. Let it shape you. 

David starts Psalm 13 longing for God’s voice, but by the end, he trusted in God’s faithful love. As we wait in silence this Saturday before resurrection Sunday, may David’s words become ours.

“But I have trusted in your faithful love; my heart will rejoice in your deliverance. I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously.”