The silence of God can be some of the most unsettling moments of our lives.
I know this full well. I am sure that you do, as well.
There are seasons in life upon this broken earth, where we are unable to sense God’s presence. We may pray yet feel as though our prayers are falling to the earth like the dead leaves falling from the trees outside our windows right now. “Where are you, God?” is the cry of our soul.
Or we may be in a place where the very idea of prayer seems to be too overwhelming. Useless. Undoable. Be it grief, fear, pain, doubt, skepticism, our own sin, the sin of others – there are times in which we just are unable to pray.
Then there are other times in which we find ourselves consistent in spiritual disciplines – yet we do not experience a nearness of God – for no discernible reason that we can unearth.
The silence of God is something I have experienced and struggled with, through the years. And because of that, I’ve thought much on the 400+ years of silence, between the scriptures in the Old Testament, and the unfolding of the New Testament with the story of Christ’s birth. But somehow, I had never truly connected them in such a way that the incredible beauty of God’s sovereignty was highlighted, until this week.
Malachi closes with the last message from God, that humanity would receive for 400 years. 400 YEARS. Can you imagine? When I experience what seems like silence from God, or a season of dark hopelessness, I become unsettled in a matter of days – not years. My weak faith tends to falter. My default mode of embracing doubt and skepticism begins to grow its icy tendrils in my mind. I am quick to express frustration at God, to God.
I am even, sinfully, quick to retaliate with silence of my own.
400 years would have completely undone me.
And I am sure, it had to have undone those who lived in that silence. That’s 4 or 5 generations…. waiting for the Messiah. Waiting, for the one who was to come.
Why did God allow so much time to pass, without a word from Him? Without tangible hope, that He was still there. That He still saw. That He still knew them – and that His redemption plan was still in motion?
Maybe it was to allow time for the political climate to create the crucible surrounding Jesus’ birth, life and death. Maybe it was because God had ordained the Christmas story to intimately unfold in the midst of the characters we are so familiar with today – Zechariah and Elizabeth, who had led righteous life in the midst of great disappointment of being childless. Mary, a young girl from Nazareth, a city of bad reputation. Joseph, who bravely stood by Mary when it would have been far easier to run. The Wise Men, who traveled far to greet the new king, and who listened to the angel who warned them not to return to Herod to report that they had found the newborn in Bethlehem.
And the group of shepherds, who demonstrated for us the act that we would do well to imitate, in running to Jesus in worship and awe.
I do not know the answer behind the silence.
But I do know this: God broke the silence exactly where he began it.
Because He is Sovereign. And He remembers us. And He will never forsake us.
Malachi 4:5-6 shares God’s last message, before the silence of the inter-testimonial 400+ year era, that someone would be sent by God, to turn the people back toward God, in preparation of the salvation that was coming:
5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”
These words. Then silence.
And then, that silence is shattered, with this message delivered from God, to Zechariah, by Gabriel the angel, about the son that would be born to Zechariah and Elizabeth – a son that would prepare the people for the birth of Jesus:
16 And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, 17 and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”
Luke 1:16-17
God had not forgotten. And he shattered the silence by bridging those 400+ years with a message that pointed both back to the message of hope in Malachi and pointed forward to the hope of that message’s fulfillment in the redemption plan of our Savior’s birth.
Those 400+ years of silence were not a long pause, prior to the birth of Jesus.
No, instead those silent years were an integral part of the Christmas story. A beautiful, difficult, sovereign, important, aching, painful, comforting part of the scene that unfolded under that star in Bethlehem.
There is sweet hope, in this story. There is comfort and joy that can be found, even within the silent days, weeks or months. You are seen. God has not forgotten you. God is still enacting His beautiful plan of redemption in your life.
Cling to that hope, friend – the hope that God is sovereign, and that He sees and knows. Cling to it with a white-knuckled grasp….and I will, too.
