Poets use word pictures to convey ideas and emotions. God is a poet. Artists use images and symbols to convey thoughts and truths. God is an artist. While the Bible does not use those words to describe Him, He is indeed the Master of Communication and illustration. Not only are the words and images written and well-designed, His Holy Spirit conveys their meaning like a translator explains what would otherwise be foreign.
His motivation is not merely to create something lovely like a poem or a painting. 1 John 1:3 tells why we have the illustrations and words God gives us. It is so “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” This skill of God is so we can have communion with Him and with one another.
Yesterday was difficult in this major way. Our Christmas guests do not know the Lord so our day of honoring His birth was split between knowing His presence yet not being able to have fellowship with the others in our presence. I felt locked in a dark room at times, unable to speak about Jesus amid conversation that was about everything else. And the Lord didn’t give me words to say. I know why that happens; they will be dismissed or it is not the right time. God knows, but I was discouraged by the darkness and by His silence.
Thomas Merton says this: “When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you, tells you of its unreality and of the reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real and blazes transparently with the Reality of God.”
This word picture suggests what I am to do with the seeming absence of God and the silence experienced when I most wanted Him to speak. First, this silence is like being given an exam. Deuteronomy 4:29 suggests, “From there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.” He is not missing. Isaiah 55:6 repeats it: “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near.” And I am to do this because as Isaiah 6:3 says, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
God is not missing. But why does it sometimes seem like it? Since He is the Master of Communication, I expected to hear Him but He did not speak.
One writer answers me: “God has already spoken everything that can probably be spoken graciously. Jesus is the ultimate, final word of God in that area. Not a syllable can be added. The only words that remain to be spoken are the final words of judgment. And God is silent now because when he speaks audibly again, that judgment will come.”
He adds that I should not argue with God or try to bring God down to the level of my want for justice or understanding or some sort of action. I’m to accept that He is good, that each day is a day of His grace, and keep on seeking Him, His truth, His communication to me — even if it is simply, “Be still and know that I am God.”
GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. When God is silent, no words, no illustrations, nothing, can I still trust Him? I’d better, for He is all that I have. I cannot trust myself, my words, my abilities or understandings. All that is left is that which He has already said to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment