With great power God grasps my clothing; he binds me like the collar of my tunic.
He has flung me into the mud, and I have come to resemble dust and ashes.
I cry out to you, but you do not answer me; I stand up, and you only look at me.
Job 30:18-20
Silence... silence in response to prayer challenges faith uniquely because faith is utterly dependent upon a word from God. Silence... silence from God when we call forth, cry out, plead unceasingly... silence even shuts up faith itself--stealing away its very breath. Silence... silence tempts us to go away--to stop crying out--to cease prayer itself and be silent ourselves.
Silence... nothing destroys God's "customer relations" like the unmet expectations of unanswered prayer. Of course, to all those "customers" of a vending-machine-God who treat prayer like its coin and faith like the coin's denominator, silence is simply the result of insufficient coinage and/or in insufficient denominations. A solution to God's silence simply requires more payment--more commitment--on behalf of the customer.
One of my mentors taught us to tread lightly, speak softly, and carry not a "big stick" but a bruised reed. "Try telling," he'd say, "Try telling a mother--awake for 30 hours at the bedside of her child, dying--try telling that mother she hasn't prayed hard enough. And if she doesn't floor you, her husband will."
When prayer gets silence in response, when we fear that God is not merely indifferent and apathetic to our plight but actively afflicting us, when there is no miracle--not even a "still, small voice"-- for faith to grasp, then there is no greater gift than a neighbor who comes as a preacher bearing God's Word into that terrible silence.. and faith catches its breath again.
"Be still! And know that I am God."
Psalm 46:10
He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him.
Psalm 91:15
[Jesus said,] “I will not abandon you as orphans, I will come to you."
John 14:18
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