When God Is Silent, Part 3

Learning to listen

In my last two blogs we have been reflecting on God’s tendency to be silent when we long for Him to speak.  That can be a real difficulty for believers, especially during those times of distress, heartache, or a cluelessness about life.  God is silent when we need Him most – what is that about?  Throughout my decades of being a pastor I have dealt with this experience over and over with those I cared for.  In my own health crisis, the silence of God along with a general fog that clouded the future made life very difficult.  I, along with so many others, longed for a word from God.  My hope is that my last two blogs shed some helpful light on this – but of course, I have more to say.    

As I said in my last writing, after centuries of growing silent God did speak, He did break the silence.  That is what Christmas is all about, the very Word becoming flesh.  Immanuel, God with us.  And yet, even with that awareness we can struggle at times, wishing He would speak more – which makes me think of a childhood story.  I am the youngest of five children, the one my Mom always said came when she was too old to have any more kids.  Regardless, I made my way into the world and, before long, became a cause for concern.  What was the problem?  As my Mom told the story, I did not talk.  I can’t imagine that is true, but that is the story she always told me.  As I remember it, I was probably two or three when my parents took me to a doctor with their concern.  He looked me over, checked to make sure I was not tongue tied, and then announced, “Everything is fine, your son does not talk because he does not need to.”  I’m sure that was shocking to my folks, that they were a bit confused – but then he added, “Why should he talk?  All he has to do is grunt and point, and the whole family jumps to give him what he wants.  Stop doing that – next time he wants something, make him ask for it.”  They did, and I started talking in complete sentences.  As my Mom would repeat the story to me through the years, she would always laugh and say, “Maybe that was a mistake, once you started talking you never stopped!”  Perhaps there was a sense of humor for God too, raising me up and calling me to be a preacher – over more than forty-five years of ministry people had to listen to a lot of my words!

For a long time God didn’t seem to talk, but when He broke the silence, He never stopped talking.  Oh, it is true, that first Christmas when the Word became flesh, He did nothing more than what all of us do when we come into the world.  Most parents will tell you that they know even from a cry what their baby wants – this is the sound he makes when he is hungry, and this is how she cries when she is wet, and listen to her coo when she is happy.  You understand – as I said in my last writing, this is how God broke the silence, in a way we would never have expected.  And though we don’t hear any words from Jesus until He is an older child, even those words are filled with meaning, Luke 2:49, “Why were you searching for me?  Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”  Well, no, they didn’t understand, but even those words say so much to us if we have ears to hear.  Among other things, God is not some terrifying deity who could care less about us, not a cosmic cop trying to catch us in some infraction or a grouchy judge ready to throw the book at us – no, He is our Father.  We will return to that in a future writing, including reflecting on how our own ideas of fatherhood may mislead us – but my point here is simply to say that, when the Word became flesh and began dwelling among us, the silence was broken for good.

One of the ways the silence was broken was in Jesus’ mighty works.  When you try to add up the number of miracles Jesus performed as reported in the Gospels, you realize there are not as many as you might imagine.  More important is what those miracles meant, what they “said” if I can word it that way.  Philip Yancey says it well in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew: “To put it mildly, God is no more satisfied with this earth than we are;  Jesus’ miracles offer a hint of what God intends to do about it.”  (p. 182)  This is a preview of what one day will be, when, as Revelation 21:3-4 says of God, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”   Jesus’ mighty works spoke volumes on what He would someday do.

But… as much as we are impressed with miracles, and as much as I am thankful for the miracle God has performed in my own life, what Jesus did more than anything else was talk.  He talked to His Father, to those who followed Him, even to those who hated Him, and through the Scriptures, to people like you and me.  He spoke of loving God with all that we are and loving others as well, putting an end to any thought that we could use God for our own ends or that we can get away with just loving the people we like.  Love your enemies, pray for them, ask God’s best – that is a tall order for many, but following Jesus makes that kind of demand.  Jesus reversed things in the Sermon on the Mount, making it clear that those who are poor get the kingdom, those who mourn get comforted, those who show mercy to others will receive mercy themselves – all sorts of things that leave us scratching our heads and yet make it clear that, if we follow Jesus, we have to live differently than others around us do. 

Jesus just kept talking, telling stories – stories of an unidentified man who was attacked and left for dead by the roadside, and those who should have cared, should have come to his need, just walked by, turning their heads the other way, leaving it to a complete stranger from a questionable nationality to show mercy.  He spoke of prodigals that woke up, crooks who saw the light, second chances for those who didn’t deserve it.  He talked about rich folk who turned out to be fools, and great banquets where the folks who were invited found something better to do, missing out on a feast with God.  Often Jesus told a story to try to bring some light into the darkness of the so-called righteous, those who assumed that, because they believed right and behaved right, they had an inside track on God.  No, Jesus said – in reality you are like an elder brother who is excluded from the party because you can’t muster up the kind of kindness, mercy, love for the fallen that your Father loves.  Even a wee little tax collector found the salvation others never thought possible.

When God began to talk, He just kept on talking, telling us that He had come into this world to bring life, to pay a ransom, to serve, to pour out His love, and most mysterious of all, to die on a cross.  It is at this point that we need to remember that the manger had a shadow of a cross cast upon it.  Jesus came to die, to give His life for you and me.  Christians through the centuries have often returned to Isaiah 53 to gain insight into what Jesus did on that cross.  We read there that He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, that the punishment He experienced brought us peace. 

But there is something else here, a special word for those who have experienced darkness in their lives, some nightmarish event, some life changing devastation.  There on the cross Jesus suffered – Isaiah 53 says he was despised, rejected, a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, taking upon Himself our sorrows.  At the cross we need to grow quiet, not in awe of God breaking the silence as He did that first Christmas, but in amazement over the way He embraced our pains, our suffering, our heartbreak.    

Listen, listen to what God in the flesh says from the cross.  “I thirst” – is there anything more basic than that in our lives, a human need, yes, but more?  We thirst for understanding, for love, for life to make sense, for an end to our struggles.  Our hearts and souls can become parched by what life throws at us – “I thirst” – our Lord says that for us, He suffers as we do.

Listen again – “Mother, behold your son – son, behold your mother.”  Family words, the recognition that when we hurt, our family, our friends hurt as well.  But more – Jesus is speaking not only to Mary but to John here, a call to provide the care, the comfort we long for in our hour of need.  He recognizes the pain we experience when we see what our loved ones have to face.

He keeps speaking, crying out our words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Jesus, Immanuel, God in the flesh knows what we face – and that means that He comprehends the depth of pain we sometimes are called to go through, the grief that can seem never ending, the weight of rejection we can feel.  He knows, He understands, and He says, loud and clear, “I am with you even in the darkest moments of life, never forget that, and never doubt my love and care for you!”

More words, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”  They are strange words in the midst of personal suffering, but even at the cross Jesus thinks of others.  He sees one who likely wasted his life, brought most of his agony upon himself, hurt himself as much as he hurt others – but just a call from this unknown man, just a cry, “Remember me,”  brings this kind of blessed assurance.  “This won’t last forever.  The pain will go even as your life leaves you.  But today, you will be with me, in paradise.”  And to any who might call out to Him, on that day or another, the cry of mercy, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”  So often we don’t know what we are doing – I am so glad our Father sees that, and that He responds with patience, presence, and mercy.

Once again He speaks, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”  Those are prayer words from Psalm 31, simple words of surrender, trust, confidence in the only One who can help us in our need.  It has been said that this was the first prayer a parent taught their child to pray at night – as darkness descends, and sleep falls, a simple trust in the One who loves us more than we can ever imagine.  “Into your hands, Father.  Into your hands.”

And the final words from the cross – “It is finished.”  Mission accomplished.  My work is done.  I’ve completed everything I have come to do.  I have fought the good fight, finished the race, been faithful to the end.  What words do you long to hear at such a time in your life, when you contemplate that moment when your last day is at hand?  How about these,  “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.  You have finished your work.”

You understand, don’t you?  Once God began speaking through His  Son He didn’t stop.  The story was told, over and over, from one person to another, and then His words were written down.  In the Gospels we see just enough of what Jesus said and did to understand how much God loves us – in the book of Acts we see how that good news spread, and in the rest of the New Testament we see how all of that impacts our lives and our mission in life.  And to this very day He uses His Scriptures if we have ears to hear, listening to words that speak to us, guide us, comfort us, correct us, and urge us. 

God has broken the silence, and we need to listen.  It is not always easy, I know that.  As I said in my last writing, the avalanche of words we hear all around us can numb us to any word from God.  In addition, prayer is a challenge for many of us (that will be a future blog), a practice we rush through or are just hit and miss.  Finally, even with the multitude of Bibles we have available to us in virtually any language, we still spend little time in those words. And yet, through the Bible God keeps speaking.

Now, I could add other things at this point – God has spoken to me a lot through people, those who said just the right word even if they did not know it.  May you be one who does that to others who are thirsty for a word from God.  And, as a pastor who has preached who knows how many sermons and led so many Bible studies I have lost count, I can tell you that you can hear God speak as you gather in the community of faith.

But still, we long for God to speak every day, and of course that brings us to prayer and the Bible.  I have a lot of thoughts in this area which I’m sure I will share with you in future blogs, but seeing this is the end of the year, that a new year is before us, let me make a suggestion.  Why don’t you consider spending a year with Jesus?

What do I have in mind?  Something I did in 2010 and I am considering doing it again in 2024.  Read the four Gospels four times, each time in a different translation.  I don’t mean hurry through it, to get it done and over with, no, I mean just a chapter a day.  Start with Matthew, twenty-eight days, almost all of January.  Mark is next, just a portion of February.  Then Luke, and finally John.  Take your time as you read each chapter.  Have a notebook with you where you can jot down some thoughts, impressions, a sense of what God might be saying to you.  Prayerfully repeat young Samuel’s words, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”  And listen.  Shape what you read into a prayer, a conversation with the Father – but again, listen.  When you have made it through all four Gospels, do it all over again in a different translation.  A chapter a day, in four different translations, will take you just under a year.  When I made my journey in 2010, I read first in the New International Version, than the Contemporary English Version, followed by The Message, and finally the New Living Translation.  Each translation brought out things I had not seen, and the cumulative effect of spending a year with Jesus – well, I seemed to hear His voice better because I had learned to listen better.

When God started speaking, He never stopped – He continues to speak to us in His Word, through His servants, from the mouths of both friends and strangers.  Listen – perhaps through this writing He has spoken to you.

I hope you have both a Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year!