| Finding the Way |
Chapter 3 |
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There are times when God seems to be silent to us. To our earnest supplications he answers not a word. We are told to ask and we shall receive, to seek and we shall find, to knock and it shall be opened unto us. Yet there comes times when, though we ask most imploringly, we seem no to receive; when, though we seek with intensest earnestness, we seem no to find; when, though we knock until our hands are bruised and bleeding, there seems to be no opening of the door. Sometimes the heavens appear to be brass above us as we cry. Is there anywhere an ear to hear, or a heart to feel sympathy with us in our need?
Nothing else is as awful as the silence of God. It is a pathetic prayer in which a psalm writer pleads, “Be not silent to me; lest I become like them that go down into the pit.” Anything from God is better than that He be silent to us. It would be a sad, dreary, lonely world if the atheist’s creed were true, that there is no God, that there is no ear to hear prayer, that no voice of answering love or comfort or help ever comes out of the heavens to us.
Do prayers of faith ever remain really unanswered? There are prayers which are answered, although we do not know it, thinking them still unanswered. The answer is not recognized when it comes; the blessing comes and is not perceived. This is true especially of many spiritual blessings which we seek. We ask for holiness, yet as the days pass it does not seem to us that we are growing in holiness. Yet, perhaps, all the while our spirit is imperceptibly, unconsciously imbibing more and more of the mind of Christ, and we are being changed into His image. We expect the answer in a certain way – in a manifestation which we cannot mistake, while it comes to us silently, as the dew comes upon the drooping flowers and the withering leaves. But, like the flowers and the leaves, our souls are refreshed and our life is renewed.
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