I find silence disconcerting. If silence lingers I think of a way to fill it. If silence lingers I wonder if I have done something wrong. If silence is accompanied by scowls, I grow insecure.
You see, if I can keep the conversation rolling long enough and make you laugh hard enough, then maybe, just maybe, you won’t see me and disapprove.
Somewhere along the way, I decided it was my job to make everyone around me happy by being who they wanted me to be or who I thought they wanted me to be. The problem with that? When things grow silent my first impulse is to take the blame for some nameless unknown offense. I offer myself up as a scapegoat because there must be something inherently wrong with me, right?
But when God is silent?
I freak.
Until I think about hiding places.
A really good hiding place is pretty quiet. It’s still. It’s silent. It’s a good kind of silent. The kind of silence that breathes.
Unless you’re scared. Then it’s not. But if it’s safe? Then it’s the best kind of quiet.
Psalm 27:5 ‘For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock.’
God is my safe place. He is my hiding place. It’s okay to hide from trouble and the best kind of hiding is in the safest of places and the safest of places are the quietest of places. What if God is silent not because he is angry, but because he is keeping me safe?
Then the silence becomes something good and beautiful. It becomes something to be thankful for.
What if silence became an opportunity to rest in the One who holds me close to his heart and hides me within himself?
When God is silent I have an opportunity to learn to wait. I learn to be still. I trust that he is working in my circumstance and in me.
What if in the silence we learn to wait on him? What if in the silence we learn to be still? What if in the silence we learn to let him work and stop striving for solutions? What if we viewed God’s silence as an opportunity to trust him more?
I am learning to be okay with sitting quietly with someone. I am learning to enjoy another’s presence without the need for words. (this is hard!) I am also learning to enjoy the sweet comradery of God’s presence without the need for words. And the beautiful thing? If I am silent I find that God is not really silent, he is just waiting for me to hush up so he can speak. It’s in those still, silent places that I can hear his whispers reaching my frantic heart and I hear him clearly.
Silence doesn’t have to be scary. It doesn’t have to mean disapproval. Sometimes silence a really, really good thing to embrace. Silence reminds me to be still.
Do I still freak out when God is silent? A little. But now I do a few things:
I don’t automatically assume that I am inherently wrong.
I open myself up to the Holy Spirit and his work.
I wait patiently and trust his heart.
What happens the next time God is silent? I am going to be still, hush up, and listen. I just might hear his whisper.
Beauty and the Beast. I love this story. I even loved the Disney version. (If you get a chance, though, look up the story in a book of fairy tales–beautiful). I use to know the music. I use to sing along to the track in my ’76 Thunderbird, pretending to be Belle as she finds understanding and her destiny in the most unlikely of places: the castle of a beast.
When I look into a mirror, I don’t see beauty, I see a beast. I see the woman who has a sharp tongue oftener than a gentle one. I see a woman who is prone to impatience. I see a woman who distractedly listens to her people while trying to read an article or book or facebook post. I see a woman with freckles that make her face look dirty, especially in the summer, when she fails to use sunscreen. I see a woman who could stand to exercise more and eat less. I see a woman who failed at loving someone well. I see a woman who was quick to judge and slow to love. I see a woman struggling to love her neighbor.
I know that Jesus calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves. But let me ask this: How can I love my neighbor when I can’t stand myself? Why am I surprised when I struggle to accept my neighbor as they are when I cannot accept myself?
Do I try harder? Do I think positive thoughts? Do I re-imagine myself into a new being? Do I come up with a three-point plan to be executed to the best of my ability? Do I beat my breast and condemn myself in the hopes that that will produce more love for others?
Could this be approaching the problem backward? Love People, be kind to ourselves, love God. Or sometimes we try this approach: Work at loving God more so I can love people better. There is nothing inherently wrong with this statement. It’s a good and beautiful statement. But when we have to ‘work’ at loving God? But when we hate ourselves? When we despise ourselves? How does this fulfill the great commandment to love your neighbor as yourself?
I find this truth: My ability to love is directly related to my ability to know how deeply I am loved.
Loving others cannot be something that is a task I check off my list. The harder I try to love others, the harder it seems. But? What if I started believing the immense truth of how much I am loved by God.
1 John 4:19 ‘We love because he first loved us.’
Love is impossible without recognizing this truth. We don’t love God because we are commanded to love God. We love God because he first loved us and because of that first arrow of love to our hearts we are enabled and empowered by the Holy Spirit to love God with all our hearts, souls, mind, and body.
My ability to love others is tied directly to my ability to receive the TRUTH of God’s love for me. You see, when I reject myself, which is what I do when I condemn myself for my failures and my imperfections, I am rejecting the love of God for me and in me. I am setting myself up as judge and jury in my life and determining me guilty.
If we press further, we see that the judge has set us free through his son. Not to live and do as we please, but only to live and do as he pleases. And that, my friend, is receiving the love he has for you and me and then allowing that love to flow genuinely through us to others.
Sometimes we have to start small.
Sometimes we have to tentatively step out in faith and say–‘God, I love you because you first loved me. I am going to ruminate on 1 John 4:19 that says that I love because you first loved me. Any love I have for another person has to flow out of that truth.’
And then, I pray that we hear these words of God sung over us:
‘You belong to me, you belong to me, you’re mine through and through. You belong to me, my Child.’
It’s in my ‘beastliness’ that I reach for and receive God’s grace of his love for me as it flows over and through me. I find my destiny in the truth of God’s love for me.
Both these words possess the same letters, but with a flip of two letters we have a whole new word.
Trials lead us to blaze new trails.
But sometimes trails lead us right into trials.
There have been trails that I have hesitated to follow because I knew they would lead me right into a trial. I could foresee that a particular path would not be easy. Trials weary me. Trials scare me. Trials require much of me. Trials are hindrances.
‘These have come [all kinds of trials] so that your faith–more worth than gold,which perishes even though refined by fire–may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.’ 1 Peter 1:7
Faith. It is a gift from God. A gift. But it’s not a gift that we put on a shelf and wait for a special day to take it down and use it. Or to ‘re-gift’ it. Or to ‘repurpose’ it. Or even to ‘recycle’ it. No. It is a gift. For you and for me to use. Faith has a purpose and it is valuable and available.
My faith is worth more than gold, and it grows more in value with use. Your faith is worth more than gold and grows more in value as you use it.
Each trial is an opportunity for my faith to be refined and to be made more genuine. Who wouldn’t want that? But who counts the cost? Could I be satisfied with mediocre faith or do I want the real, unmoving, firm kind of faith? Then I must welcome trials. Not that I am going to go create trials, but my perspective on trials should change.
To see it as a loving refining fire. To see it as an opportunity to prove to myself and the world that my faith is genuine. Why? So that Jesus Christ is revealed in my life and receive praise, glory, and honor.
In Genesis we meet a young man by the name of Joseph, who experienced a long, refining trail. His dreams, his integrity, and his faith did not keep him out of the the trials he experienced, but God used them to affect a miracle in the lives of his people.
Sometimes our trials are meant for a bigger story than just us and ours. Sometimes our stories are meant for someone yet to be. Sometimes our stories are for someone we may never meet. Sometimes are stories are meant for God alone to use as he sees best.
May we greet each trial, with faith instead of fear? May we trust the heart of God that the trail that appears dark and frightening is really filled with treasured beauty that will be revealed as we take those steps of faith?
