“When God Seems Silent”
By The Rev Julie Yarborough
January 29, 2006
Psalm 46
[ Audio
(mp3, 4.5Mb) ]
d is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.”
What comforting words! They assure us that God is there for us --
whenever we are in need, whenever we are in trouble.
Throughout the centuries,
people have turned to the psalms for comfort.
When we are troubled or worried,
the psalms give us encouragement and reassurance to get on with the task of living our lives.
Yet occasionally we encounter a worry so deep or a grief so heavy
that the solace we seek cannot be found,
not even in the words of Scripture.
A few years ago I was leafing
through a magazine, and a headline caught my eye: “Years of Captivity Dash
Former Hostage's Faith.” The article
was written about Tom Sutherland, one of the men who was held hostage in
Lebanon for 6 1/2 years. “During his
captivity, Sutherland was held in 26 locations. Some of his cells were cold, dark, underground 6x6 holes. After 18 months of captivity, Sutherland was
put in a solitary underground cell.” He became so discouraged that he tried to
commit suicide three different times by pulling a plastic bag over his head,
but each time, he would think of his wife and three daughters and stop short of
killing himself.
Tom Sutherland was a Christian when
he was taken captive -- he had even been an elder in his home church -- but
after his experience in Lebanon, he no longer believes in God. When asked why, Sutherland answered, “ I
prayed so many times, and so hard, so hard I prayed, and nothing happened.”
I suspect that many of us, at one time or another, have felt
abandoned by God. This kind of
heart-wrenching grief may be the result of a divorce or the death of a child. It may come in the aftermath of a rape or
other violent crime. It may be the
result of finding out that you or someone you love has a chronic or
life-threatening illness. Whatever the
cause for deep despair may be, we become aware of great pain, loss and
isolation. When we experience such
grief, we may read the Bible and see only empty words. We may go to church and feel alone in the
midst of the congregation. We may cry
out for God and be met with silence.
The author C. S. Lewis had been
married only four years when his wife, Joy, died of cancer. The Lewises were very much in love and Joy's
death was almost too much for C.S. to bear. He plunged into a deep depression and did the only thing he knew to do:
he wrote. During that time he filled up
several journals, which were later compiled and published under the title, A
Grief Observed.
With the untimely death of his wife,
C. S. Lewis' unwavering faith was called into question. It seemed to him as
though God had been present in his life until
catastrophe struck. Soon after Joy's
death, Lewis wrote these words:
. . . Where is God? When
you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so
happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an
interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with
gratitude and praise, you will be -- or so it feels -- welcomed
with open arms. But to go to Him when your need is desperate, when
all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in
your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.
After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you
wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. . . . What can
this mean? Why is God so present a commander in our time of
prosperity and so very absent a help in times of trouble?
(A Grief
Observed, pp. 4-5)
These may sound like harsh words, but Lewis was in the
deepest despair imaginable. He cried
out for some reassurance that God was there, but the heard nothing -- only
silence. Just when Lewis needed God
most, he felt like God had abandoned him.
Our Psalm for today reads: God is
our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth
should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its
waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.” These are supposed to be words of
assurance. The Psalmist is saying that
God is with us. We have nothing to
fear. Even when our world seems to be
crumbling down around us, God will be present to sustain us.
These words are reassuring
when we feel the Divine presence strongly in our lives. We can take comfort in the fact that God
will always be there for us, even in times of trouble. . . . Yet what about those times in our lives when
God does not seem present, when our world is falling apart and it feels as if
we are all alone? What about those
moments of deep despair when we call out in agony and God seemingly ignores our
cries? Why is it that we feel God's
presence keenly when things are going well and we're content with our lives,
but when a tragedy occurs and we desperately cry out, God seems silent?
When author Frederick Buechner was a
child, his father committed suicide. In
the book Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner[1],
Buechner tells about the impact this had on him, and with the story of his
father's suicide as a backdrop, he describes how he understands God's
presence in our lives. He writes:
As I understand it, to say that God is mightily
present even in such private events as these does not mean that [God] makes
events happen to us which move us in certain directions like
chess[pieces]. Instead, events happen
under their own steam as random as rain, which means that God is present in
them, not as their cause, but as the one who even in the hardest and most
hair-raising of them offers the possibility of that new life and healing which
I believe is what salvation is.
For instance, I cannot believe that a God of love
and mercy in any sense willed my father's suicide; it was my father himself who
willed it as the only way out available to him from a life that for various
reasons he had come to find unbearable.
God did not will what happened that early morning in Essex Falls, New
Jersey, but I believe that God was
present in what happened. I cannot
guess how God was present with my
father -- I can guess much better how utterly abandoned by God my father must
have felt if he thought about God at all -- but my faith as well as my prayer
is that God was and continues to be with him in ways beyond my guessing.
God
continues to be present with us as well -- in ways that we will never know or
be able to guess. Scripture does give
us some clues, however.
The Psalmist has written, “The Lord
of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” Why does the Psalmist mention the God of Jacob? And how is the God of Jacob our refuge? God promised Jacob protection and companionship. The promises made to Jacob have also been
made to us. Listen to the promise God
made to Jacob, which is recorded in the 28th chapter of Genesis: “Know that I am with you and will keep you
wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you
until I have done what I have promised you.” The Psalmist tells us that just as God promised to be with Jacob and to
keep him wherever he went, God has also promised to be with us.
So why is
it that we don't always feel God's presence? Why is it that God sometimes seems silent? As C. S. Lewis began to come out of his grief after his wife's
death, he wrote these words in his journal:
I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is
no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed
it in my face? The time when nothing at all in your soul except a
cry for help may be just the time when God cant give it; you are
like the drowning man who cant be helped because he clutches and
grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice
you hoped to hear.
(A Grief Observed, pp. 53-54)
Perhaps
Lewis is right, perhaps when we are fraught with anxiety or grief, our own
inner voices are making so much noise that they drown God out. Or perhaps we can't hear God because we
don't recognize Her voice. I believe that
God speaks to us in many different ways -- in our dreams, through our children,
through the community that gathers around in a time of crisis, through the
family that gathers around the bed of a dying loved one, in a sunset, in a “way
that comes out of no way,” through a beautiful piece of music or work of art,
in that still small voice deep within. Maybe God was present to hostage Tom Sutherland in the memory of his
wife and daughters that kept him from killing himself.
What can we do to recover a sense of
God's presence when we feel abandoned and alone? Sometimes it helps just to “go through the motions.” Jewish
Theologian Abraham Heschel has said, “The way to faith is the way of faith.” Believing in God, even when it seems that
God is silent, can be sustaining in and of itself. Our faith can help to carry us through even the darkest of times.
During the 1930's and 40's, more
than six million Jews were killed in concentration camps. Those who survived the Holocaust witnessed
countless atrocities, and many were tortured and left to starve to death. When the concentration camp in Auschwitz was
liberated by Allied troops at the end of World War II, the following words were
found written on one of the walls inside the compound:
I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining.
I believe in love even when I am alone.
I believe in God, even when he is silent.
In
the midst of immense suffering, the woman or man who wrote these words held
onto faith in God, even when it seemed that God had disappeared. Holding onto our faith in the midst of grief
or despair can help to lead us to the place of quiet where we can once again
hear God's voice.
Listen again to the words of the
Psalm: “God is in the midst of the
city; it shall not be moved; God will help the city when the morning comes.”
The morning will come and when it does, God will help the faithful. Psalm 46 ends with the words: “Be still and
know that I am God!” As our grief
subsides and we become centered, we will once again be able to hear God's
voice, in whatever form it takes. It is
not that God is silent. God is found in the stillness. God does not leave us
when the going gets tough. God does not
abandon us when we experience the darkness of despair.
“The Lord of hosts is with us; the
God of Jacob and Rachel is our refuge.” Amen.
[1] Listening
to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner, Frederick
Buechner, HarperCollins Publishers, 1992, p.322.
© 2005
Julie Yarborough.
All rights reserved.
