Silence!

I am in an interesting part of the Bible right now. I just finished reading the book of Esther and have started the book of Job. I find these two books interesting because they show God being silent or only providing very limited information, at least from man's perspective.

In the book of Esther God is not mentioned. The word pray or prayer or praying is not mentioned. If this were the only book of the Bible a "non-believer" had, would it convince them that there was a God in heaven? Would it convince them to believe in the sovereignty of God? I don't know. What I do know is what God does tell us about his word:

II Timothy 3:16 - All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.

All scripture includes the book of Esther. And yes, from a Believer's perspective there are some very valuable lessons on the sovereignty of God. Whether we choose to acknowledge God or not, whether we call on the name of God or not, his will will be done. He uses the good - Esther and Mordecai, the bad - Haman, and the ugly - King Xerxes, not that he was physically ugly but some of his actions were - to accomplish his purposes. It is a fascinating story and I highly recommend that you read it.

I started the book of Job just a day or two ago. This is also fascinating from several perspectives. Although God enters into a dialog with Job, he never tells Job why he allowed all of the "turmoil" to happen to him. We, as readers after the fact, know why it happened but at the time no one could figure out why it was happening. Job nor his "friends" could quite come up with an answer.

As I thought about this my mind went to the crucifixion. This had to be a troubling time for Christ's disciples. Here is the guy who told them he was the Messiah, he was the son of God, he was God himself, and here he is ripped to shreds, hanging on a cross! Here he is just a few hours from certain death and the God of heaven is silent, not a word. God could have spoken, when Christ began his ministry just a few years earlier God spoke:

Matthew 3: 16, 17 - 16As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. 17And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."

God spoke then but not now. Does that mean God was not intimately involved in what was going on? Was God busy doing something else and failed to realize his son was dying? Obviously not, it was during this time God was very involved in what was going on. His son was paying the penalty for a crime he did not commit, his son was being unjustly mocked and ridiculed by passers by because of our sin. Was God involved, absolutely he was involved. Did the disciples see it at the time - no, did they get discouraged - yes. I think some of them may have walked away that day saying "What just happened? We just spent 3 years with a man who claimed he was God and now he is dead." I think they may have looked heavenward and said "God, where are you in all of this?"

I think we need to realize that our lives are a story being written by an amazing author. The problem we have is that we do not know how many pages are going to be written in our book, we do not know what page we are on or even what chapter we are in. God knows exactly where he is in the story of our life. Even if we cannot see the author at times, even if it seems as if the author has stopped writing in our book, he has not, he is there, he is doing more behind the scenes than we can ever know.

Hebrews 11: 1 - Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

While we may not see anything tangible at times, we can rest in knowing that he is intimately involved in what we are facing every day and every moment, using these events to make us in to who he wants us to be.