When God is Silent

 “When God is Silent” - Psalm 22 – Part I

There are times in our faith journey when Almighty God appears silent.  It is as if the cumulative sum of our circumstances drowns out His voice.  The agony of our predicaments overpowers His voice.  We yell in pain so loudly that we cannot hear Him.  In a calm moment, we ponder His great silence.  We ask the proverbial questions, “Why is God silent?  Why does He not do anything?  Does He not care about me?’” 

Jesus, as He dies on the cross, asks, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?”  The psalmist defines the depth of his torture.  He cries our by the day.  Yet, God remains silent.  At night, he continues his appeals to the Most High for deliverance and relief.  But, God remains silent! 

Have you had the experience of praying without ceasing but leave your prayer period feeling that you have not been heard?  You begin to wonder whether you should bother to pray anymore.  Cynically, you ask, “What difference does it make?”  You say to yourself, “I have never prayed so hard about something in my life.”  Others around you come to you with testimonies of answered prayers.  Skeptically, you fall for the temptation of thinking that God has contradicted His word and become a respecter of persons.  Why is He answering others and remaining silent in my situation?

Yet as a person of faith, like the psalmist, you realize that Almighty God is the Sovereign Lord of the universe.  He is the One in whom our forebears put their trust.  “They trusted and [He] delivered them.”  Fervently, our biological and spiritual ancestors cried out to the Lord because they unquestionably knew that He would save them.  They unwaveringly believed in the gracious and all-powerful hand of God.  Not surprisingly, the unfailing love and faithful provision of Almighty God never disappointed them.

When we stroll down memory lane, we acknowledge that God has never been silent in the past.  He speaks in the midst of our bleakest challenges.  His non-verbal communication is His mysterious and majestic way of orchestrating the details behind the scenes to accomplish His “good, pleasing and perfect will.”  God’s verbal silence resembles the intermission period of a Broadway play.  In the midst of the darkness of our adversities and the foreboding silence, we have the divine assurance that Almighty God is at work in the midnight as He is at noon.  God always shows up seemingly in the nick of time.  Verbally and non-verbally, He speaks forcefully to fulfill His will and transform us into the likeness of His character.

Nonetheless, the tremendous amount of pain that the psalmist feels returns him to a self-deprecating stance.  He refers to himself as “a worm, and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people.”  Whereas the furnace of affliction burns away the dross of one’s character, the intensity of its heat often leaves one seeing only the negative aspects of any situation.  Furthermore, God’s apparent silence leaves a vacuum in which the internal and external voices of derision, criticism, and insults resound loudly.  The psalmist says, “All that see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads; He trusts in the Lord; let the Lord rescue him.  Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.”

Essentially, the psalmist remains perplexed at the silence of Almighty God.  He recalls the many lessons about God and His trustworthiness that the psalmist receives as a child.  In fact, he admits that his mother taught him to believe and trust in God as she nurses him.  From birth, the psalmist was taught to rely upon the faithful provision of Almighty God.  Accordingly, he desperately appeals once again, as if he were launching a “Hail Mary,” to the reputed benevolence of Almighty God.  With all of the strength that he can muster, the psalmist begs, “do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.”