Is God Ever Silent? Part 2
dialogue with a God who listens
I wish that I would have thought about the God who listens before I wrote my first post, “Is God Ever Silent?” So, here’s Part 2 (makes more sense if you read Part 1) ….
-makes even more sense, if you become a free subscriber…or if you like, a paid one.
That aside, if you have been raised as I have to embrace the God who speaks, then you may be disturbed when it seems as if God is silent. The Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament writers introduce us to a Creator, who enters into a dialogue with his creation. The God who speaks wishes a conversation. In the misty origins of our human race, God enters the garden to ask humanity a question: “Where are you?” I tend to think that he knows precisely where the human race is hiding in the bushes, trying to cover up its first debacle. God is initiating a conversation.
If you have any Christian orientation then you most likely have discovered, at least sub-consciously, that the Holy Scriptures, Christian liturgy and Christian prayer are part of a dialogue between the divine and creaturely. We humanoids speak language because we are made in the image of the God who speaks.
The human race, made in God’s image, also has the capacity and growing skill to listen. The God who speaks is the God who listens. If God is silent then he may be listening to you or waiting for you to speak. The God I worship never says, “Shut up! I’m talking and will fill every space with the echoes of my voice.” The God I worship is sometimes - regularly in a dialogue, awaiting my response.
I have been married 35 years and half-way through these years I finally discovered that I interrupt my spouse, talking over her, telling the rest of the story or inserting what I think needs to be said. It’s a rather nasty habit. It’s taken me 17 plus years to break the habit. I think that I am 50% corrected but you would have to ask her….and I promise to be quiet and listen to her response. I don’t think of God doing what I do naturally. I think that God speaks then listens to a number of others in the conversation, allowing a good amount of space for others to process and to contribute. I’m trying my best to be more like God in a conversation - like Jesus, the master of asking questions and listening to the responses. Read the four Gospels ( a rather short read) and you will see what I’m talking about.
It’s remarkable - the incarnation of the Son of God - entering into our world, initiating conversations with a question…answering a question with a question…making space for a dialogue. It’s humility on steroids. Why would an infinitely powerful, all-knowing God care what creatures have to say? The answer, in part, is that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament actually values/invites a conversation.
If you have a hunch that God is silent, then speak to this God. Enter the dialogue. Start by listening/reading what others have claimed God to have said, then respond.
Today we are handicapped by our communications technology. When I was a young minister in the late 1980’s with a phone on a cord plugged into the wall, I was trained to answer a call within 24 hours. Now, someone texts me and expects a text response within minutes. If I fail to respond within minutes, the person texting actually thinks that I might be holed up in the hospital. In the snail mail world, in which I still participate, I write a letter and mail it. The US Postal Service takes a few days to deliver my ink on paper message. The receiver goes to his/her/their box, slits open the envelope with a forefinger or a knife, reads my message, then sits down a few days later to write a response, posting it a week later, the message landing in my mail box, who knows how many days after. The time lapse allows for some thought before a response.
You might be thinking: “Well, God is beyond time and space and has no need for time to lapse before speaking again.” Perhaps, God condescends to our time and space limitations. It’s possible that God enjoys a conversation on our terms. It’s possible that we grow during a time lapse in the conversation. Time to think. Time to process. Time to change. Time to transform. Time to discover our true identity. Time to recognize God’s voice in the cacophony of voices in this information rich, finger-tipped world of immediate responses to timeless, mysterious gems of wisdom.