Silence?

I just finished reading my buddy, Eric Clapp's, blog post on "Japan and the Silence of God" and it got me thinking about the topic--well, not exactly the topic he is talking about. It got me thinking about how we can hear God in the silence. I'm worried, in the wake of what happened, to say that God is present, but I want to. I really want to--not because I think a loving God likes seeing people crushed, not even because I think God tolerates it. I have to believe that God hates it, more than we do, and that's why God is there--comforting, holding the people of Japan. Even as they are suffering--dying; God is there promising that it is not the end. Creation is groaning, as Paul writes in Romans 8.

Are we listening? This isn't an environmental piece (that comes with the Concord on Wednesday). This is a piece about listening. How do we think about silence when we have a headphone in our ears every free moment? I want to believe that God is present in the midst of unanswered prayers more than anywhere else. I don't have any data to back that up, just a hunch, because if the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is powerful enough to save all of creation surely God knows enough to see the despair and loss and say, "There. There I am."

That's a people bearing their cross. That's what discipleship looks like.

Is this going to make sense on the other side of the silence--the stillness and repose of death? Perhaps. I hope so... and I also think so. Maybe silence is where God spends God's time... maybe silence is the only place where such a thing as "God's time" exists.

God didn't come to Sinai in the wind or the fire or the quake...