This post will offer an intermission in our current discussion – one well worth taking!
From Barbara Brown Taylor’s When God is Silent*
Sometimes I think we do all the talking because we are afraid God won’t. Or, conversely, that God will. Either way, staying preoccupied with our own words seems a safer bet than opening ourselves up either to God’s silence or God’s speech, both of which have the power to undo us. In our own age, I believe God’s silence is more threatening, perhaps because it is the more frequently experienced of the two. Very few people come to see me because they want to discuss something God said to them last night. The large majority come because they cannot get God to say anything at all. They have asked as sincerely as they know how for answers, for guidance, for peace, but they are still missing those things. They want me to tell them what they have done wrong. They have heard me talk about God on Sundays and they hope they can make use of my connections. Perhaps I know a special technique they can try – or better yet – perhaps I can lend my own weight to the cause, adding the poundage of my prayers to theirs in an effort to force some sound from God.
Their wish to hear God speak is not unfounded. The Bible they read portrays a God who not only speaks but who also acts. Right there on the page, the faithful receive what they ask for: children, manna, land, health. By implication, those who do not receive are not faithful. They are not right with God. If they were, God would speak to them. “For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened” (Luke 11:10).
This is the condemnation that hangs over the silence of God, as if that silence could mean only one thing. Meanwhile, scripture is full of silences, both human and divine, that mean not one but many different things. (51-52)
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