The Joy of Silence

Be still, and know that I am God. Psa 46:10

Seasons Come and Seasons Go

Greetings Friends.

I am sorry I got swallowed by silence.

I know it’s bad manners. But I trust I am forgiven.

Solomon wrote “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” A time for talking, and a time for silence; a time for gazing at the stars, and a time for going inside.

Some things can only be done in silence and not in a hurry. I am attempting such a task. It will make me scarce this year but God is in control. I ask only for your prayers. I need them.

Nothing Strange

Now I love silence. From childhood I have been a silence hawk. But a dear friend of mine has averred that I am traumatized. She worries it is why I am silent. I don’t know that I suffer from such a thing. I know I have laughed out aloud through my life instead!

Is that traumatic?

Her solution though is that I should talk – the very thing (if I have a trauma) which drove me into a trauma in the first place! I have hated talking since childhood!

My favourite gesture as a child, I remember, was resting my palms in my cheeks. It infuriated my mom. Many times she threw a live log of fire in my direction to drive her point home: “Remove those hands there! No one has died here!”

It always sent me laughing.

Mind you, I am not taking traumas lightly. They are real. They are devastating.

But from a believer’s perspective it is not strange.

Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: 

But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. 1Pe 4:12-13  

God has used “traumas” before to bring his will to prevail among his beloved people. Take Israel’s slavery in Egypt, their exile in Babylon, and the holocaust for example.  

Mankind has been in exile since Adam and Eve lost Eden. And exiles are always traumatic. We are restless, and we shall remain so, until we return home to God where we belong.

Finally God did not spare his own beloved Son from the worst trauma of sin. He did it, because he loved us. Love, believe me, can be traumatic.

Has there ever been in history such a traumatic cry as this, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

A Love As Strong As Death

Yet the amazing thing is that God did it. He unleashed his full wrath on his beloved Son.

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. Isa 53:3-4 

It’s quite amazing. God traumatized his Son in our behalf. That love is breathtaking. If he were a woman we should call her crazy and deranged. But this isn’t a woman but God!

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. 

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned. Son 8:6-7  

Healed By a Trauma

But why should God love like this? To remove the trauma of our sin. To make our return to Paradise possible.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. Isa 53:5 

God did it for his name’s sake. He did it for his mercy’s sake. He did it so we may have his peace which passes all understanding.

That’s the silence which I want to enjoy for life.

Are you restless? Are you traumatized?

God died for you!

He went to the uttermost.

For Good or For Worse

So whether we suffer good, or traumas or tribulations, God is not limited to use anything to save, even swords and deaths.

But don’t fear.

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. 1Co 10:13  

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Rom 8:28 

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Rom 8:35  

So I think, if I have a trauma, then it is because my silence was stolen from me in childhood!

Too much noise, I think, is akin to a trauma, especially to the sensitive heart.

Today we don’t wonder. We don’t fear.

Everything is beautiful. And therein, I believe, lies the root of our traumas. For we can’t call evil good and good evil without badly upsetting the foundations of the heart.

It wrecks it.

But noise is a distraction. It throws up the blinds. And the result is always pain and the loss of the childhood wonder.

Book for All Seasons

The Bible is a book of trauma. But it is also a book of miracles. The grave gave up the dead. And now Christ lives forever. But even more the Bible is a book of great silence.

Sometimes it’s those tunnels of great darkness which are the true bulwarks of our Christian faith. That is the lesson of Job’s trauma – and that of all the prophets. For we walk by faith and not by sight.

The great silence of heaven has meaning. God wishes for everybody to find that out by whatever way he chooses for his beloved.

Don’t resist him.

It takes dirt to dig out gold. It takes fire to polish it.

May the God of all grace grant you the joy of silent seasons this year!