These words were found scrawled on the wall of a concentration camp:
I beileve in the sun, even though it doesn’t shine,
I believe in love, even when it isn’t shown,
I believe in God, even when he doesn’t speak.
God’s silence offers us the choice – faith or sight. We can either abandon our faith or learn to trust in the dark. God leaves that choice up to us. And all the while he’s more interested in our faith in him than our ability to decipher his silences. The poet Coleman Barks wrote, “The only way we know the play of destiny and free will is to dance the mystery and die inside it.”
Jesus, Job, David, and that man in the concentration camp danced the mystery.
I can’t think of a single place in the whole Bible where God actually explained his silence. I can think of lots of times when people asked him to, but I’m not sure he ever did. I dont know why God is so silent. I really don’t know. I do know that none of those men – David, Jesus, or Job – gave up on God. And God never gave up on them.
When you listen to a song, you only hear the harmony because of the emptiness between the notes. If the song is too full of notes, it becomes nothing but noise. To hear the harmony you have to let the silences have their place in the song. It’s like each note is a pearl upon a necklace and the silences are what strings them all together.
Maybe God knows that without his silences in our lives, we will never hear the melody of faith.
I think in every person’s life a day comes when faith becomes a choice. You can either give up on the silence of God or choose to trust him in the dark as Jesus did while he was dying on the cross.
In the end, most of the Israelites gave up on God.
And at last, God stopped sending his prophets. He stopped speaking to his people. The Old Testament ends with the word ‘curse’. And that terrible word echoed in the hearts of his people for four more centuries.
While God remained silent. As silent as the sky.
