The Silence of God

"For the Lord said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place...[But] before the harvest, when the bud is perfect...He shall both cut off the sprigs with pruninghooks, and take away and cut down the branches." Isaiah 18:4, 5

A great enemy is threatening Israel, and God apparently has decided to sit on the sidelines. "I will take my rest." The doom draws near, and God seems to have checked out for lunch. Then, right before the "harvest," right before Israel is made a bounty to its enemies, God steps in quite literally when all hope is lost.

Nothing is quite so spirit shaking like the thought that the deist are right. Nothing troubles faith more than the thunderous ring of God's silence. Tribulations do not nearly rock us so bad as the horrid thought that God has forgotten us. In Shusaku Endo's book Silence, a poor Catholic priest is confronted with the ominous horror of the silence of God. Little did he, or we, realize that God's silence is never an issue of His memory; it is always an issue of His timing. Just as neither His thoughts nor ways are known to us, so neither are the plan of those thoughts nor the timing of those ways. They are His mysteries and our discoveries.

The "Me" generation may as well be called the "Now" generation. If it cannot be microwaved in less than a minute, then we want no part of it. God is never in a hurry, yet we are always in a hurry: this work must be done now, this ministry must grow now, this soul must be saved now. Nothing affects true Christian trust and patience than this infectious consumerism that demands quantity over quality, a rate of return over a relationship with God; and it is an infection most rampant in the Church.

Are we truly working with God, or just getting in His way? Nothing makes us jump the gun like God's silence. We must learn the faithful art of trusting patience, for even when God is silent, He still is moving. The Love that moves heaven and earth is never still, though it may be silent.