Janie B. Cheaney: Listening in the silence

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Up next, WORLD commentator Janie B .Cheaney on the lessons from silent desperation.

JANIE CHEANEY: Take a survey of favorite traditional Christmas carols, and “Silent Night” will come out near the top. It’s easy to see why: it’s the wonder and candlelit stillness of Christmas Eve, when the waiting is almost over and we pause at the end of a hectic season to just be quiet. It’s the silence of heavenly peace.

But silence isn’t always heavenly. Sometimes it echoes with desperate pleas. A few case studies:

Paula is sunk in depression, for the first time ever. She is not a depressive personality, but a crusader, a culture warrior. Still, the bad news is piling up: financial, political, personal. She doesn’t know how to help herself or those closest to her, and so far the Lord is silent.

Martha has been struggling with cancer for six years. She’s experienced triumphs and upswings, faith strides and faith affirmations. But lately the news is all bad, and the pain is harder to manage. Her job, these days, is being sick. She’s still a wife, mother, and Christian witness, but all those roles, like her body, are fighting for space with the cancer. Should she give up, or fight on, or does she have a choice? Silence.

Olivia fell in love and got more than she bargained for: a good man, cute children, and a wild card of an ex-wife, who is rarely responsive to reason. Depending on how she feels moment to moment, she can sow long-lasting weeds of discord into a young family trying to adjust to their new configurations. Is there a solution? Silence.

Much of secular counseling focuses on isolating the problem. Success is measured by how far away you can keep it. Even Christian counseling can be all about victory; about overcoming. But where problems are outside our control—the illness or the antagonist or the stubborn obstacles that won’t give way, when you beg the Lord and pound on his door and nothing changes . . .

At least you’re in good company. Job famously railed against God’s silence in the face of what seemed like rank injustice. David and other psalmists begged the Lord to rebuke their enemies, “Lest, if you be silent, I go down to the pit” (Psalm 28:1).

But it may take awhile for God to silence your enemies. In Lamentations chapter 3, Jeremiah, who would know from experience, advises that “It’s good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” While waiting, remember the time when God himself was the victim of rank injustice. In the wild clamor of that night, even while his good friend Peter was loudly denying he even knew him, Jesus never opened his mouth. Rather, as Peter would later write, he “continued entrusting himself to the one who judges justly.”

That silent night in Bethlehem probably rang with the bleats of animals, the clatter of wagon wheels, and watchmen calling the hours. But at its heart was God’s justice and mercy, quietly nursing. In your own lonely silence, listen for him.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

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