The Silence of God
In those moments when you’re consumed by pain and grief, when you’re not sure you’ll survive the night, not sure you want to. Darkness closes in until you can’t breathe and the only sound you release is guttural, only to be met with silence.
The sound of silence is deafening, as if God doesn’t care or slipped away to help someone else. You may feel alone and abandoned, or worthless. The pain may feel like punishment, as if you are the abuser.
What others did to harm you isn’t your fault. You didn’t allow it, and you aren’t flawed or unworthy. Sharing your pain isn’t complaining, it’s lamenting, it’s giving pain a voice.
Most people can’t handle our pain. Our pain may trigger their pain so, they may throw out words that will feel like a knife in your soul.
Just get over it.
Forgive it.
It couldn’t be that bad.
You’re letting it control your life.
Just give it to Jesus.
Move on from it.
There is a reason for it.
Jesus will use it to make you stronger.
Only they never tell you how to do whatever they just told you to do.
What do you do when your IT demands to be heard?
We do what any reasonable person would do. We bury it and pretend it doesn’t exist. We’ll put a mask on to keep anyone from seeing the storm raging within us.
Only pain always finds a way out. It leaks out like a pinprick in a jug of water.
Sometimes our mask slips and we’re overwhelmed. We overreact and act like a crazy person saying things we normally wouldn’t say. We may lose awareness of ourselves, others, and especially God. We may fight those who want to help, or we run and hide, we may go into survival mode, or we just give in.
Eventually, the self-protection backfires. We may feel isolated and abandoned until one day the pain and shame stop leaking and THE DAM BREAKS. We’re exhausted from trying to keep our life together, yet in the dark of night, we know we’re one choice away from giving up.
Denying the pain doesn’t make it go away, it makes it scream louder, just like pain when we break our leg and try to walk on it. Ouch!
Pain is good. Yes, you heard me right. Pain and grief are good and necessary if we want to heal.
Without pain, we would never know we were hurt and need healing. Pain tells us there is something dreadfully wrong.
Did you know Jesus died for so much more than our sins?
He is familiar with grief, weakness, sorrow, and pain. While he walked on the earth, he was despised, rejected not just by the people but the ones who walked with him for three years. He was crushed and punished for what he didn’t do.
Beaten so we could be whole, complete, and sound. He was whipped, so we could heal. And God laid all the evil, including the evil done to us on him. He was oppressed, treated harshly, and condemned unjustly.
As he hung on the cross, only a shadow of a man, he felt the full weight of sin, death, and pain. In that moment, he cried out to God and was met with silence. I don’t believe his Father turned his back on his son. I believe the pain and sin Jesus carried silenced the voice of God so that he felt abandoned.
Jesus did nothing without talking to his Father first. Imagine the agony Jesus must have felt when he couldn’t hear his Father’s voice? The one he’d been in constant conversation with even before Jesus the man was born.
He knows betrayal, abuse, loss, and rejection.
Pain silences all the voices, including our own. We filter everything we hear through our pain. Pain causes us to question who God is and who we are.
Here’s what I want to leave you with. Jesus has already been where you’re going.
“So, God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. Jesus has already gone in there (holy of holies) for us” (Hebrews 6:18 – 20 NLT).
BeLoved when your pain is met with silence, remember, just as God didn’t turn his back on Jesus, he won’t turn his back on you. Our pain may silence his voice, yet he say’s he’s close to the brokenhearted. And he can’t lie.
You are loved. You are seen. You are heard.
Karen