Monday Reflection – September 21, 2020

When God Seems Silent

I am shut in so that I cannot escape; my eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call on you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you. Psalm 88:8-9

One of the most difficult seasons we can endure as believers is when we feel God is silent, especially when we are in the midst of challenging situations. When it seems everything is going wrong and help seems to be nowhere in sight, it leaves us feeling forgotten, dejected and rejected. Our major frustrations from these seasons come not from simply being in this pit, but thinking that God’s silence means his absence. 

The author of this Psalm identifies with this situation and writes about been through this heartbreaking situation. Psalm 88 appears to be one of the saddest and most dismal chapters in the Bible. The writer expresses feelings of being overwhelmed, cut off, forgotten, grieved, rejected, terrified, despaired and imprisoned. Worst of all, he is crying out to God wondering where God is in all his suffering. The Psalmist ends saying, “darkness is my closest friend” (vs. 18).

However, as Christina Patterson points us, the hope this Psalm offers is not in its ending, but in its beginning. In verse 1 he says, “Lord, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you.” Before he lays out a long list of everything that is going wrong, the Psalmist acknowledges that there is hope for salvation in the Lord, even when God appears silent. We learn that just because God is silent does not mean he is absent, and it certainly does not mean he is not working behind the scenes on our behalf. We must not be deceived by the darkness in our life, it is never greater than where our help comes from. Even when we feel we are in the darkest of places, the writer of Psalm 88 assures that God is there with us.

Four times in this Psalm the writer calls out to God. There was clearly no one else worth reaching out to. The writer must have grabbed a hold of God’s precious promises and desperately clung to them. He knew of God’s endless love and his promise to never leave us nor forsake us. We learn that God is right in the darkness with us and he even walks through the valley of the shadow of death with us (Psalm 23:4). We may not always feel or hear God, but we can always believe his promise is greater than our darkness.

Amazingly, this dark season pushed the Psalmist closer to God. He was not calling out to another person or thing for help. He called out to the one he knew could save. This Psalm reminds us that our dark seasons do not serve to show us that God is absent, but how desperately we need his presence. The Psalmist felt his life was near death so he cries out to the very One who raises the dead. He does not look for salvation from people or things, but from the giver of salvation and the fountain of abundant and eternal life.  Our dark seasons have a purpose. Sometimes the purpose is for us to rely less on self and more on God. I believe this is a sobering lesson to learn in the midst of Covid-19. There is purpose in our pain and hope in our dark season to push us to the light.

Patterson reminds us that sometimes God empties us so he can fill us back up. Sometimes he is silent so we can learn to listen. Sometimes God allows darkness so we can see that he is the true light of our lives.

 Jermaine Gibson