WATCHWORD:
1 A man named Lazarus was sick. He lived in Bethany with his sisters, Mary and Martha. 2 This is the Mary who later poured the expensive perfume on the Lord’s feet and wiped them with her hair. Her brother, Lazarus, was sick. 3 So the two sisters sent a message to Jesus telling him, “Lord, your dear friend is very sick.” 4 But when Jesus heard about it he said, “Lazarus’s sickness will not end in death. No, it happened for the glory of God so that the Son of God will receive glory from this.” 5 So although Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, 6 he stayed where he was for the next two days. 7 Finally, he said to his disciples, “Let’s go back to Judea.” John 11:1-7
Meditation:
The Silence of God
Sixty years ago, Paul Simon wrote a strange but insightful poem that he set to music. It was recorded by Capital Records and released in 1966 as The Sounds of Silence. Eventually it made it to #1 on the hit charts and stayed there for an extended period. According to Simon, the poem spoke to the inability of people to communicate on an emotional level. The first verse, which begins with “Hello darkness, my old friend”, reflects on the absence of joy in too many of our lives.
God uses silence as a means of communicating with us. That may sound a little bit odd, but in a very real way it is true. Often God’s silences are His answers to prayers, to hopes, to our times of need.
An example of God using silence can be found in the story of Lazarus. In the book of John, we read of Jesus’ response when he heard that his friend Lazarus was sick even unto death. Yet he delayed two days in Jericho (think a form of silence) before he began the journey to Bethany. Can you imagine the silence of grief that must is enveloped the home of Martha and Mary? Their faith in Jesus was sorely tested, and yet it never wavered.
Oswald Chambers in a devotional asked the question, “Has God trusted you with His silence, a silence that has great meaning?” What does that mean, has God trusted me/you with His silence?
Well, God trusted Martha and Mary. Can God trust us accordingly? Or are we still asking him for a visible answer, a response that we can hear and see and know? Are we in mourning because we don’t trust God to respond in his own time, not yours, not mine — His time?
Chambers answers this way: “When you cannot hear God, you will find that he has trusted you in the most intimate way possible, with absolute silence. Not a silence of despair, but one of pleasure, because he saw that you could withstand an even bigger revelation”, something that goes beyond our ‘asks’. If God has given us a silence, then we need to praise Him. He is bringing us into the mainstream of His purposes.
There is a wonderful thing about God’s silences, they are contagious. It gets into us and causes us to be far more confident in our relationship with God, and we can say with surety that God has heard us. His silence is the very proof that he has. We are blessed. Amen.
Waiting on God:
Randy Alcorn offers this “… From Andrew Murray’s Waiting on God: “It is God’s Spirit who has begun the work in you of waiting upon God. He will enable you to wait. . . . Waiting continually will be met and rewarded by God himself working continually…For God alone my soul waits in silence . . . my hope is from him” (Psalm 62:1, 5). If we lean on him while we wait, God will give us the grace to wait and to listen carefully as we pray, go to trusted Christ-followers for encouragement, and keep opening his word and asking him to help us hear him.” —
Praying His Word:
“The Lord your God is in your midst,
A victorious warrior.
He will exult over you with joy,
He will be quiet in His love,
He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy. (Zephaniah 3:17)
To You, O Lord, I call;
My rock, do not be deaf to me,
For if You are silent to me,
I will become like those who go down to the pit. (Psalm 28:1)
O God, do not remain quiet;
Do not be silent and, O God, do not be still. (Psalm 83:1)
O God of my praise,
Do not be silent! (Psalm 109:1)
