Holy Week: A Silent God

Before He died, Jesus promised that He would walk the earth again.  After He died, I imagine this silence that fell over His loved ones.  I can picture them trudging through the next few days wondering if Jesus really would come back.   Obviously we know how this ends….

But let’s step back and examine our hearts.  There are so many times in my life where my fire for Jesus just died.  Year after year I would go to church camp and by the end of the summer, the God I felt so near around the campfire was mysteriously gone.  Or even in bigger moments, like after graduating college and coming off the high of “I did it!” and fell into the depression of “What’s next?”  In these moments, we find ourselves in that same silence of a dead God.  But yet again, we know how this ends…

We know how it ends in the very end….the end of our lives and the end of time, but what about the seemingly, non-existent end of the current silence? The “church camp God” of my youth seemed to slip away after graduation and never returned.  The silence at first killed me.  I felt like 90% of Job, where it is just Job ranting, praising, pleading, crying, and pretty much experiencing every moment and no word from God.

Be still before the Lord

   and wait patiently for him;

do not fret when people succeed in their ways,

   when they carry out their wicked schemes.

--Psalm 37:7

Max Lucado puts it this way in his book You’ll Get Through This, “To wait biblically speaking, is not to assume the worst, worry, fret, make demands, or take control.  Nor is waiting inactivity.  Waiting is a sustained effort to stay focused on God through prayer and belief.”  Let me repeat that waiting is not inactivity.  The Psalm captures that perfectly.  We are called to wait.  Job waited years and his reward was greater than his pain.  Guess what.  Your reward is greater than your pain because you reward is eternal life.

To put it bluntly, it sucks.  Waiting is boring, worrisome, and demanding.  But I have this heart-grabbing reminder on my desk at work:

“Difficult days demand decisions of faith.”

--Max Lucado

In the middle of the suckiness of waiting, we have this opportunity to  to test our faith (James 1:3), produce wholehearted loyalty to our King (Luke 16:10), and ultimately reap the benefits of God’s promises (Romans 8:28).  Sometimes waiting is hours, weeks, months, or years.  Sometimes the good of “all things” from Romans 8:28 isn’t until we reach eternity, but Easter is a celebration of the end of waiting.  Easter is a reminder that the silence comes to an end.