Q Is For Quiet: When God Doesn’t Answer

God’s silences are actually His answers.

~Oswald Chambers

O God, I’m parched by my tears,

I’ve worn out my fears,

but through these long years,

you’ve been quiet.

I learned something recently about the way I’m wired: a non-response equals rejection. The e-mail not returned, the text message ignored, the smile of greeting never noticed–I wince  at their silent sting.

So when God is quiet, when my prayers lay scattered at my feet, unopened, what am I to think? “He’s angry. I don’t matter. He has better things to do.”

I’m not the first to hear only crickets.

The Hebrew Bible closes with the return of the first exiles to Jerusalem after seventy years in Babylon. The Christian Bible ends with Malachi, the prophesy of a “great and terrible day of the LORD,” still to come.

In either case, the final ink mark seques into  silence–four hundred years of human history with no apparent word from God. While empires rose and fell, generations were born and buried, God’s people were put on hold.

What did they do as they waited? What many of us do today.

In the search for  God’s attention, we

• Try hard to impress him.
• Find other gods to supplement him.
• Escape from life to await  him.
• Use power to force his hand.

Jesus encountered all four (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots). I wondered if he pondered the prophet Jeremiah’s way.

When God Is Quiet

Jeremiah penned a letter from God to the Babylonian exiles. With the land of promise conquered, the temple destroyed, no heir of David on the throne, every evidence of God’s presence and love was gone. The stifling quiet of a non-answer leads easily to bitter lament. But God has something else in mind for us in the middle of every delay:

“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce…multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” Jeremiah 29:5-8

• Build a garden, nurture life in barren places.
• Savor the goodness of the moment, instead of peering anxiously ahead.
• Turn strangers into family, the lonely into kin.
• Embrace community even when it’s easier to be alone.
• Work and pray for the good of where you are, instead of where you wish you could be.

“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” Jeremiah 29:11. 

In quiet obedience, you may just become God’s answer. 

Have you planted any gardens lately?

In our series, An Alphabet Adagio, we are savoring the story of the Bible, our story, alphabetically. You can subscribe to e-mail at the bottom of this page so you won’t miss a letter.