Nothing

Have you ever had a song or part of a song that you can’t get out of your head? Recently, I could not get Nothing out of my head. Don’t laugh; it’s a song by The Script. The songwriter says,

 

“I wanted words, but all I heard was nothing.”

 

The song echoes the pain of silence. The same silence that many call golden. Silence may be golden in some cases. It can even be therapeutic. It’s a blessing to the young mother who has a free day from the little ones because of grandma. It has a healing aspect for the busy executive that finds relief from a mountain biking trip in the middle of nowhere.

 

Silence is anything but golden when we want words, when we need words from the ones we want to so desperately hear from. The songwriter is basically sharing about heartbreak from silence, and the measures we go to hear love through words of admiration. I believe many go through the same kind of heartbreak when God seems to be silent in their lives.

 

How do you react to silence? The songwriter contemplates extreme measures by asking, “Am I better off dead? Am I better off a quitter?” A more important question is: How do you react when God is silent? Asaph begs God not to be silent. (Psalm 83:1). David does the same in Psalm 109:1. Man has struggled with the silence of God for centuries. The problem is not with God’s actions, or lack there of, but our reaction. This is one of the reasons God became one of us in order to show us how to react to His silence. Jesus asked a powerful question while dying on the cross. He asked, “My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken me?” And He heard nothing. Jesus was quoting Psalm 22 where the psalmist declares God as holy. He declares God as worthy of our trust, even in His silence (Psalm 22:3-4).

 

We all have to figure out if we are going to reject God, because of His silence, or if we are going to trust Him. We are never better off quitting God. We are definitely never better off dead to God or declaring Him dead to us.

 

Let me encourage you with the truth that God is there and He loves you deeply, even in the silence. You can exhaust all your options to try to get God to speak. You may even turn to things of the world for relief from the silence but it all comes down to developing the spiritual discipline of realizing, by faith, there is Someone waiting on you, even in times that feel like He is saying nothing at all.