Silence

It's Good Friday: the day we remember when God became a man and took on a horrible punishment for us that He didn't deserve and didn't have to endure. Every evil, sinful thing ever committed or ever to be committed hung on him: lies, gossip, murder, gluttony, pornography, prostitution, addictions, torture, selfishness, hatred, prejudice, apathy, idolatry, oppression, the love of money, abuse, lust.

And his Father abandoned him to his suffering.

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Silence.

It seems appropriate for today to be a stormy day.

Interestingly, I read this passage by Oswald Chambers this morning:

"Some prayers are followed by silence because they are wrong, others because they are bigger than we can understand. Jesus stayed where He was (after hearing that his friend Lazarus was dying; story in John chapter 11) --- a positive staying, because He loved Martha and Mary. Did they get Lazarus back? They got infinitely more; they got to know the greatest truth mortal beings ever know --- that Jesus Christ is the Resurrection and the Life. It will be a wonderful moment when we stand before God and find that the prayers we clamored for in early days and imagined were never answered, have been answered in the most amazing way, and that God's silence has been the sign of the answer. If we always want to be able to point to something and say, 'This is the way God answered my prayer,' God cannot trust us yet with His silence."

I'm not the only one who feels that sometimes God is silent. God Himself can understand how I feel and what I'm going through.

God's silence could be the sign of the answer. On Sunday, Easter, we get to celebrate the greatest answer - forgiveness and eternal life - after the silence of Good Friday. I take hope in that.

I'm not sure what the answers will be for us after God's silence, but I hope it's bigger than I can understand.