“Be still and know that I am God. …”
Psalm 46:10 ESV
Silence…
In the wake of obedience… came… silence…
Silence can be a dangerous thing… because we naturally want to fill it… complete the story… even when we don’t have any facts…
In the absence of data, we will always make up stories. It’s how we are wired. In fact, the need to make up a story, especially when we are hurt, is part of our most primitive survival wiring. Meaning making is in our biology, and our default is often to come up with a story that makes sense, feels familiar, and offers us insight into how best to self-protect.
–Brene Brown, Rising Strong
Basically… we just can’t stand not knowing… so we fill the silence with assumptions… presumptions… and conclusions… all founded on nothing… but our own imagination… and possibly the voice of the enemy…
But what I discovered… in this most recent silence is… He is at work… silently… quietly… revealing… what’s in us… through the silence…
In me… He revealed the lingering root of the fear of man…
A dependence on the judgment of others… what they think of me… still outweighing my fear of Him… His judgment of me…
He revealed… what others think is not to be my primary concern…
My concern… my only concern… is His judgment of me… without fear of others…
Jesus’s disciples faced the silence of Saturday… after the horrors of Friday…
It is finished…
And in the silence following His final words… they hid from those who killed Him… who might also want to kill them…
Their fear of man… also far outweighed… their trust in Him… in God… in all He taught them…
The silence left them behind a locked door… in an upper room… minds racing…
When facing silence… remember… He is at work…
And really… there is only one story we need to know…
One story with which to fill the silence… any silence…
His story… the gospel…
Christ has died…
Christ is risen…
Christ will come again…
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
John 20:19 ESV
Consider the silence you are facing…
How are you filling the silence…?
What might change…? if you filled the silence with His story…?
[Photo by Scott Umstattd on Unsplash]
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