Psalm 22:1-2
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer.
Few Christians have chronicled their struggle with God more poignantly than C.S. Lewis. The famed author was deeply in love with his wife, Joy. Though they met and married late in life, few romances bloom as theirs did. Not long after their relationship began, she was diagnosed with cancer. She endured a long and terrible season of illness before she died.
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Lewis wrote about his feelings following joy's death in a series of notebooks that were later published as A Grief Observed just before his own death in 1963. His most telling observation? The silence of God.
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness . . . On the rebound one passes into tears and pathos. Maudlin tears. I almost prefer the moments of agony. These are at least clean and honest . . .
Meanwhile, where is God? . . . When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him . . . if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels — welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become . . .
Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?1
Many of us have experienced the silence of God. We cry out to God, and there seems to be no answer. We pray, pouring out our hearts, only to hear the words echo back without a reply.
The maddening thing is that we have been conditioned to expect a direct relation between input and output. If we work a certain number of hours, we will reach a certain level of success. If we place our children in the right schools, enroll them in the right programs and practice the proper procedures, they will turn out as hoped for. If we invest our money strategically and wisely, we will receive a fair return on our investment.
When we cry out to God and nothing happens, how can we help but feel something's not quite right-and that the problem is with the Listener? Few things are more damaging to a relationship than a sense of not being heard or responded to. It's as if we don't matter, that there is no genuine concern. If God is calling for our soul, and we are attempting to connect with him at that level, there seems no place-no excuse-for silence.