Here is someone hungering for a word from God. He alludes to a difficult time, a season where he has been calling out to God in the midst of pain, grief or confusion. From all angles it appears as if God is silent to his cries. But notice what he goes on to write:
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God . . .My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you . . .Deep calls to deepin the roar of your waterfalls. (Psalm 42:5-7)
The psalmist comes to see that there is no silence; the answer coming from God is deeper than words. God is present, and speaking, but what he's saying isn't resting on the surface waters of life. This is a season where deep is calling to deep or, as Thomas Kelly phrases it, a time of going "down into the recreating silences."4
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When I was nineteen years old and in college, I was invited to a weekend party at a nearby university. My friend Phil was going, and he encouraged me to come along. I wanted to go and tried to make it happen, but I couldn't get away.
Four people left without me on a Friday afternoon. Two days later, as they returned to campus, a car from the opposite flow of traffic crossed the dividing line and flew headfirst into their car. All four were killed instantly.
I first heard the news late that Sunday night. I left my dorm, walked over to the nearby athletic complex, hopped a locked fence and sat in the empty football stadium under a moonlit sky. I grieved for my friend; I thought of the brevity of life and how close I had come to being killed. I remember crying out to God to help me sort it all out, to make sense of it all. To talk to me . . . to say something . . . anything!
Silence.
In truth, it was the deepest conversation we had ever had. God was moving within me, communing and communicating with me on levels that I had never opened to him before. That night was the first of many such conversations — some even more traumatic. Within four months I became a Christian.
Perhaps it's not silence we're encountering while we seek God, but rather a pregnant pause — a prompting to engage in personal reflection so that the deepest of answers, the most profound of responses, can be given and received.
In an article in the magazine Fast Company, the chess master and much sought-after mentor Bruce Pandolfini discusses how he works with his students:
My lessons consist of a lot of silence. I listen to other teachers, and they're always talking . . . I let my students think. If I do ask a question and I don't get the right answer, I'll rephrase the question — and wait. I never give the answer. Most of us really don't appreciate the power of silence. Some of the most effective communication — between student and teacher, between master players — takes place during silent periods.5