Out of the Silence

Last week I started reading God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer, by Pete Greig. I didn’t realize it was going to be timely reading, because he uses the Easter timeline as the structure for his chapters. Did you ever stop to wonder what happened on that silent Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday? What were the disciples thinking? What did they do? Did they pray, or were they too shell-shocked to even think? It must have seemed like all hope was lost. Greig writes:

“No one really talks about Holy Saturday yet if we stop and think about it, it’s where most of us live our lives. Holy Saturday is the no-man’s land between questions and answers, prayers and miracles. It’s where we wait—with a peculiar mixture of faith and despair—whenever God is silent or life doesn’t make sense.”

Sometimes it can feel like we are still stuck in that silent Saturday. God isn’t answering our prayers as we’d like, and we wonder if He really does hear or care. The challenge for us is how to hold onto hope and endure with patience until the day when every question is either answered or no longer relevant.

 “The Bible leaves us in no doubt at all that when God is silent, He is not absent from His people—even if that’s the way it feels. He is with us now as much as He ever was. He’s no less involved in our lives than He was when we could hear His voice so clearly and could sense the joy of His smile…

“Why can’t we wait with the mess and pain of Holy Saturday unresolved? …In our fear of unknowing, we leapfrog Holy Saturday and rush the resurrection. We race disconcerted to make meaning and find beauty where there simply is none. Yet.”

We try to comprehend things that don’t make sense because we simply don’t have all the facts. God has not given us all the details or explained His master plan for our lives. We don’t want to wait patiently. In Christ’s resurrection is our reason for hope. Because He was raised, we can trust the promises of Scripture that God hears and answers prayer in His perfect way and time.

In his book Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday, Alan. E. Lewis writes:

“But such is the world we live in, no different now from the first Easter Saturday, the day of divine abandonment and absence. Yet is not all prayer designed for Easter Saturday, the product of confusion, emptiness, and grief? Prayer is desperation translated into daring — the risk of letting go of confidence, eloquence, and that ‘spirituality,’ so fashionable now but so seductive. To pray is to confess not the abundance but the exhaustion of one’s verbal, intellectual, and spiritual resources. It is surrender to one who prays for us when we have no prayers left… Prayer then, the sound of silence upon Easter Saturday and every day which reenacts it, is the last breath of our self-relinquishment, the freedom we give God at last to be God, gracious, holy, and creative” (464).

May we not rush ahead in the church calendar, but dwell in the truths of Easter: Jesus is alive; God is still sovereign; He knows our weakness and hears our prayers; we can trust Him to do what He deems best even if it doesn’t always make sense to us.

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27 ESV).

© 2019 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated all images are copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

He Knows

I’ve been reading through the Old Testament lately, and just came to Exodus 2. Verses 23-25 say:

“During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew” (ESV, emphasis added).

Just three little words, but they tell so much of the story, and of our story. God knew that the Israelites were in a desperate situation in Egypt; after all, He was the one who arranged for Joseph to be in charge in Egypt during the years of famine. God knew they needed help. But more importantly, God knew that He already had a plan in the works to redeem them through the hand of Moses.

In more recent times, God knew the suffering and decimation of the Jews in Nazi Germany. God knew what was happening on 9-11 as planes were being hijacked. God knew what was happening with every major earthquake, hurricane, and tsunami ever recorded. It’s hard for us to look at massive deaths and destruction and believe that God is both in control and concerned for His people.

And it’s not just the events that make the national news. Friends of mine from college have a daughter who was born with multiple birth defects. She has endured (and thrived) through numerous surgeries, and recently celebrated her 16^th birthday. They will be quick to tell you that she is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). God not only knew what He was doing, but He “knitted her together” the way He chose.

Ravi Zacharias brings it close to home for me in his book The Grand Weaver:

“To be able to accept the wonder and the marvel of one’s own personality, however flawed or ‘accidental,’ and place it in and trust it to the hands of the One who made it, is one of the greatest achievements in life. His ‘registration number’ is on you. Your DNA matters because the essence of who you are matters and whose you are by design matters. Every little feature and ‘accident’ of your personality matter. Consider it God’s sovereign imprint on you” (28).

He later says:

“Faith is a thing of the mind. If you do not believe that God is in control and has formed you for a purpose, then you will flounder on the high seas of purposelessness, drowning in the currents and drifting further into nothingness” (43).

I’m sure we all go through times when we wonder whether God is paying attention and if or when He might intervene. Nations go to war, churches split, couples divorce, children are left orphaned, and yet through it all God knows. Individuals go through physical or mental illness, all kinds of abuse, and even death, and God knows.

If you read on through the book of Exodus, you see all the details that God worked out to free His people from slavery in Egypt. He is at work today in working out His master plan and weaving His grand tapestry. We may never get to see the bigger picture in this lifetime, but in the life to come we will be awestruck by the beauty He has created out of what seemed so messy and painful at the time.

On my bathroom mirror I have taped Matthew 10:31, which with the context from verses 29-30 says: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

He knows, and He cares.