12 Moments of Christmas: Day 4 - Trusting the Silence
December 05, 2022

Trusting the Silence 

Silence from another person can evoke hard emotions—causing us to feel ignored, misunderstood, forgotten, or even abandoned. But we can also be so comfortable with someone that we don’t need to speak. A good friend can guess our thoughts without talking. In a painful moment, someone’s presence can be worth more than any words they could offer.

Why is silence sometimes golden, and sometimes so frustrating?

Maybe it’s because we don’t like not knowing what’s going on. In our human quest to understand, sometimes we assign an intention to someone’s silence. We make an assumption about that person’s motivation. When we do that, we may find out we were wrong.

Mary must have wondered about God’s silence. After a dramatic revelation from an angel, and a relative’s prophetic recognition of her growing baby’s identity, scripture never records Mary receiving further instruction from the God who had gotten her into this situation in the first place.

We don’t hear that when she was eight months along and exhausted, he told her she was doing great, and that there were only a few weeks left.

We don’t hear if she worried over the decision to travel to Bethlehem. Should I go, Lord? What if my baby is born far from home? Mary didn’t have the luxury of a birth plan. Her miracle didn’t come with step by step instructions. She was human, and it doesn’t seem like a stretch that she might have liked some additional direction—that there were nights along the way when she asked, Lord…? and didn’t hear the clear reply she longed for.

As Mary labored and pushed and struggled to deliver her son into this world, she couldn’t see outside the room. She couldn’t know that just over the hillside, every angel in God’s choir was warming up, confident that God’s plan would succeed, one step at a time.

And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. Luke 2:18-19

God’s silence is never about dodging a commitment to us. And it’s never about forgetting. God is with us in his own silence, as much as he’s with us in the days we’re silent toward him. Today, if God seems silent, try not to guess at his motivations. Remember that we can’t see outside our own room, can’t see what’s happening on the next hillside. Encourage someone as you wait together to see what God will do.

Song: “Once Upon” – Sovereign Grace Music

This song is part of our Silent Nights playlist on Spotify.


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