God's Silence
I will never forget my first ever at-bat as a freshman baseball player at Belmont University. To this day I’m not sure how it happened. It had never happened to me before, and there was no reason for me to suspect it would happen here. I was a decent hitter but the odds were probably one in a million.
The pitch came, I loaded my stance, I thought of everything in that split second: hips, hands, torque, table-top swing, bat speed, acceleration . . . and then . . . I heard it. Not the smack of the catcher’s mitt, not the ping of bat . . . my face. In all my thinking, in all my strategy, I forgot to get out of the way of the ball. It hit me square on my left eye. 86mph of force right to the orbital. I wish I could say I handled this like a champ but I went down hard. I screamed at the top of my lungs, “I’m blind. I’m blind!” By the end of the ordeal I found myself in the emergency room looking at x-rays of a completely shattered face. I had surgery, replaced some of my bones with titanium plates and didn’t play another inning of baseball for the rest of the season.
The impact of the ball shattered my face, but it was in the four months of recovery where intense searching, questioning, and not finding God’s presence became the norm. I needed answers but got none. I needed hope but found emptiness. I needed to know I would be alright but, instead, was left wanting. The impact of the ball shattered my face, but the wilderness of the recovery nearly shattered my faith.
I bet each of you know the sting of God’s silence. Disappointment. Anger. Illness. The loss of a job. The death of a loved one. You’re questioning but not finding any relief, any answers, any hope.
And the truth of the matter is these too are the feelings of the second generation Christian congregation— the feelings of constantly being “off-center.”
Scholars tell us the generation of Christians like the congregation in Hebrews is a community that has been hit in the face by a metaphorical baseball. They’re a community that is struggling for guidance and in desperate need for words of hope. Why? Because they are second generation Christians. They’re being persecuted by the Romans. None of them have seen Jesus. None of them ever talked to Jesus. They are living out the faith of their parents that told them Jesus would save them. God would return to them. They were told Jesus would end their persecution. But it hadn’t happened yet. They’re hurting. They feel abandoned. Their faith is off-center. They are tempted to drift back to the Jewish faith that was once so comfortable. God’s presence is equally as absent as it may be for us.
In high school I found little need for authentic spirituality. I grew up in a small town, and I got a lot of praise from the people around me. I got enough attention to fuel my ego for years. I participated in a lot of activities and found myself in several social pipelines. I felt important. I felt watched. The praise from the world was enough for me.
But then I left high school and went to college. Packed my bags and moved to the big city. I wasn’t nearly as important there. The world didn’t revolve around me like I thought it did in high school. I quickly became discouraged, lonely and distraught. My faith, my loves, my beliefs weren’t rooted. They didn’t have the strength to hold me. I began wandering further and further away from my core. It’s no wonder that when I got hit in the face, I found myself struggling to find God – I was too far from my center.
To hear God’s voice, we must begin to move back towards our center. Hope comes when we seek after God. Hope comes when we hold on to our faith; when we resiliently believe God can bring healing, redemption and peace. Hope comes when God hurls a holy summons, a disturbance, a voice of revelation. Hope comes when God speaks. And the irony is . . . God always speaks . . . just sometimes we choose not to listen.
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