The Struggle with Silence

Job never loses faith that God is just and reasonable. His frustration is that God is inaccessible (Job 23:2-9). Where is God when children are starving in Africa? Where was God during the holocaust? Where was God when a child was killed by a drunk driver? There are no easy answers to these questions. Philip Yancey wrote Where is God When it Hurts and Timothy Keller wrote The Reason for God dealing with this question. William P. Young wrote The Shack, a novel about one man’s intense struggle with God’s apparent absence. None of these works is “the answer.” God, in his omniscience, decides when and how to reveal Himself. Sometimes there seems to be a famine for word from the Lord (Amos 8:11). Sometimes visions from the Lord are rare (1Sam 3:1). Since we do not know all that He knows, all we can do is trust God’s wisdom and timing. He is not slow, but patient. Every minute that He forestalls judgment is grace for us (2Pe 3:7-9). In the mean time we can do what we can to mitigate the suffering and keep trusting Him (Gal 6:9-10).