When God is Silent...

Living in a big city brings with it all sorts of noise. Fire engines and ambulances. Honking horns and helicopters. People milling about the Mall and people protesting in front of the White House. There seems to be some kind of noise all the time. Depending on where you live, it can be 24/7. We are even aware of it during our worship on Sunday evenings. In our times of silent prayer, you can dogs barking and children playing. We can hear the sirens and the honking horns that seem to break into the silence in our worship.

As we wrap up the series on prayer, we are reminded that of the contradictory nature of silence when it comes to God. In our prayers, often silence is the best way to listen for God’s still small voice. Yet, after we have prayed, often the silence can be deafening. As we wait to hear from God, the silence becomes paralyzing, lonely, and sometimes, painful. We move from listening for the still small voices to reacting to anything and everything we hear. We long to hear God, but sometimes what we get is…silence. In her book "When God is Silent," Barbara Brown Taylor writes, "God's silence is the more threatening (over God's speech), perhaps because it is the more frequently experienced of the two." Quite often people will come to a pastor not because of what God said to them last night, but most often because God is saying...nothing.

So, as we explore prayer, how do we approach this silence? What does it mean? What do we do? The Dark Night of the Soul can be unbearable, but what might God be saying when God seems to say nothing at all?

What will we do in the silence?

See you Sunday at 5 PM!

Jimmy