A Jon Post
There’s a moment. I don’t really know how to describe it. It comes after a prayer, a Bible study, a tear, or a simple breaking of the soul.
It’s the silence of God.
I’ve prayed and cried with a man who holds his dying son in his arms and looks at me and asks me what he should do. He has just heard from his wife that another of his children in his distant home is in the hospital. “What should I do Jon? I can’t go home and leave my son here at the hospital, and my wife cannot watch over my other children while one is in the hospital. What should I do?”
So we pray and cry and wait.
And we’re answered by the silence of God.
See it’s easy to walk into a place of suffering with stories of overcoming obstacles, deliverance, and God’s goodness in times of trouble. But how am I supposed to look into the one good eye of a boy who is about to return home with a tumor hanging over his other eye because the one hospital in the country with chemotherapy is out of its chemotherapy treatment. What do I say to this boy of hope?
And the silence of God hangs thick and it nearly freezes the tears to our cheeks.
Andrew Peterson, a singer/songwriter said this:
There's a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold And He's kneeling in the garden, as silent as a Stone All His friends are sleeping and He's weeping all alone And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
I think Jesus knows what the Silence of God feels like. I think He’s intimately acquainted with the torture of the soul that comes with a desperate prayer and the inky blackness that drapes over the heart in response.
I think Jesus hasn’t forgotten the sorrow that Albano, Marçelino and Rosina carry.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.(Isaiah 53:3)
Wow… a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
See, I may not understand what my friends in oncology go through. I may not be able to wrap my mind around the intensity of the pain that they experience every day, hour, and ticking second in their beds.
But the man of sorrows does. He does. He’s familiar with their suffering.
What other God could I turn to than this? What other God answers sorrow and suffering, not by waving a magic wand and making us all smile and making it all go away… but by joining us in it.
Christ Jesus… the man of sorrows. He knows deeply the silence of God.
Jon, thank you for reminding me that while we may never understand the silence of God, there is Someone who now sits at the Father’s side who has also spent those hours listening, seemingly in vain, for an answer, a word, a syllable to bring comfort and make sense of this life.
jon, I have a friend here that is going through an awful divorce… she keeps going back to “the silence of God” and it makes her mad… but you said exactly what I have been trying to tell her. But, how do you say it in the moment. You cant. But, you summed up everything beautifully. :) Thanks.
Jon, I feel the same as Patricia. My cousin in jail that is trying to cope with the sentence he was given – I have been trying to find the “right” words to say, some way to encourage him, find some kind of hope in his situation. I still have a hard time understanding God’s silence, and the suffering of people..thanks for sharing on this subject. I still don’t feel like I have any answers, except to keep praying and not giving up…
Well said Jon……I don’t know if we will ever grasp ‘The Silence of God’, but I praise Him for hope amongst pain, suffering, and loss. Thank you my son for be His servant and for showing all of us true faith even in the silence~
May our Elder Brother helps us learn by his example — to enter into the pain, suffering, and waiting … alongside those who are experiencing God’s silence. I hope I can be like Jesus in that way. Not just pat someone on the back and say, “I’m praying for you,” but to weep and groan with them. To stop my busy life, and take the time to empathize. I have the sense that perhaps God is sometimes silent because He is offering us that role. It would be so much easier if God just said or did something to “fix” things. Then I would not have to stand there thinking “What can I do? How can I help?”
Do I really want to enter into the painful place with a suffering one?
Very eloquent words. In one way or another, we all go through something where we feel the Silence of God. Where is He? Why doesn’t He answer? Why don’t I feel that He is working on the situation?
I firmly believe we experiance the silence because God is too busy cradling us in His hands. Pray, pray and pray some more. That’s what we should do every-single-day.
I’m glad we are never alone! My prayers go out to y’all.
Wow! I just had the opportunity to read this post in its entirety. . .and then. . .to share it with Joe when he called a few minutes ago. There is One who knows so well the silence of God. Where we question, he knows. Where we feel frustration, he knows. Where we doubt, he knows. He knows, he knows. . . . God has given you a depth of wisdom, an insight, that allows you to embrace the sick and dying, to sit with them, weep with them, sorrow with them, and in those precious moments that may seem far apart – rejoice with them. May he continue to be your supply.
Jon, I really needed to read this and to read the beautiful posts of everyone commenting. I am so thankful too that we have a Savior who knows pain and suffering and because He does we are comforted through The Holy Spirit. The awesome thing is that He uses us if we’re willing to be administers of His Spirit, and you and Layne are being blessed in just that way :)