When God is silent

"Jesus did not answer a word!" (Matthew 15:23)

Who has not come to Christ with a burden, crying out for help or for relief—only to find Him silent? To many of our earnest supplications, He seems not to answer a word.

We are told to ask—and we shall receive, to seek—and we shall find, to knock—and it shall be opened unto us.

Yet there come times when we ask imploringly, and do not seem to receive; when, though we seek with intense eagerness, we do not seem to find what we seek; when we knock at the door of prayer until our hands are bruised and bleeding, and there is no opening of the door.

Sometimes the heavens seem to be brass above us; and we ask, "Is there anywhere, an ear to hear our pleadings? Is there anywhere, a heart to feel sympathy with us in our overwhelming need?"

Sometimes God seems to be far off—so far that our cries cannot reach Him. Nothing is so awful as this silence of God—the feeling that communication is cut off.

Few prayers in the Bible are more pathetic than that in the psalm: "Be not silent to me, lest I become like those who go down into the pit!" Anything from God, any punishment, is better than His silence!

Oh, it would be a dreary world, if the atheist's creed were true, that there is no God, no ear to hear prayer; that no voice of answering help, or love, or comfort, ever comes out of the heavens.

J.R.M.