Silent Answers

I'm not the kind of person who does those cheesy, overdone blog posts like: 30 Things I Learned Before I Turned 30 or 10 Ways I Improved My Life in 10 Days.  That's just not my style.  Yet, as I sit in a very quiet library during a very long, low-traffic period behind the circulation desk, my mind has begun to wander into realms of contemplation I rarely have time to explore, much less put into words. 

What have I learned in the last 5, 10, 20 years of my life?

Why am I where I am right now, in this very place and time and season?

What am I to do with the amount of silence I currently seem to experience, both in reality and spiritually, and why does this silence no longer scare me?

And in the midst of these thoughts, one question which has been a constant companion from the first time I ever heard until now remains:

Oh Lord, our Sovereign...when I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; what is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him?

Such questions as these are insulted by shallow platitudes or answers full of their own morality.  Instead, these queries deserve to be chewed on, experienced, appreciated from all angles, and given the two-fold power to attest to change and enact change on and in the inquisitor.   

In allowing this process to occur, no matter how joyful or painful, tense or relaxed it may be, I come to an answer (not the but an) for a very small portion of my questioning thoughts: why does silence no longer scare me? 

As a child, silence was a fertile ground in which fear grew.  I would wake up in the middle of the night when the house was dark and everyone else was asleep and be overwhelmed with the vastness of the absence of light and sound.  I look back at that 7-year-old hiding under the blankets, starting at every little noise, and long to take her into my arms and tell her that the thing that brings her fear is, in the end, a place of comfort and rest before God.  What my young mind and spirit could not grasp in those moments of fear is that silence and darkness are frightening places to be, because they strip us of every distraction and separation and place us vulnerable before the Most High God, the all-powerful, all-loving Sovereign Lord.  Silence draws out the question: Who am I that You are mindful of me? 

The answer to this question is not so important as the genuine asking of it.  To ask is to open oneself to wonder, to inquire, to search deeper for what God's response might be.  And in God's goodness, the answer is an ever-deepening richness of relationship with the Triune God. 

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!

Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me!

Underneath me, all around me, is the current of Thy love

Leading onward, leading homeward to Thy glorious rest above!