You’ve prayed the prayer. Maybe through tears. Maybe at three in the morning. Maybe so many times the words have started to feel hollow in your own mouth. What came back was nothing. No answer. No sign. No sense of presence. Just silence.
Eventually, a harder question takes shape behind the first one. Is anyone even listening?
You’re in Good Company
If God’s silence has shaken you, you should know that you are standing exactly where some of the greatest figures of faith have stood. The prophet Elijah, after his greatest victory, fled into the wilderness wanting to die. In the Psalms, the psalmist begged God to stop hiding. Even Jesus, on the cross, cried out the words of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Mother Teresa spent her life serving the poorest of the poor, and she is remembered as one of the holiest people of the twentieth century. In private letters, she wrote that for nearly fifty years she felt as though God had forgotten her. “In my soul,” she wrote, “I feel just that terrible pain of loss.” Every day, even so, she kept praying. She kept showing up. She kept turning toward the silence.
The Hidden God
Lutheran theology has a phrase for what you are experiencing. Deus absconditus, the hidden God. Martin Luther and the other reformers understood something we sometimes forget – God does not always show up the way we expect. God won’t be hemmed in by our timeline. Like Mother Teresa, we must remain hopeful in our prayers, believing that God is faithful.
When the prophet, Elijah, was at his lowest, God told him to go stand on the mountain. A great wind came, but God was not in the wind. An earthquake shook the ground, but God was not in the earthquake. A fire blazed, and God was not in the fire. Then came a sound of sheer silence. A gentle whisper. God was there.
Sometimes the silence is not God’s absence. Sometimes it is how God speaks.
Finding God
Here is what Lutherans have always insisted. Faith is not built on your feelings. Feelings come and go. Some seasons you will feel close to God. Other seasons you feel that God is outside a closed door. Faith is not the warm feeling. Faith is what you cling to when the warm feeling is gone.
This is why we have what Lutherans call “The Means of Grace.” These are the means through which we experience God’s presence. One of the means is God’s Word, the Bible. Another means is through Baptism and Holy Communion, which we call the sacraments. Even though we don’t see God, you can still hear God’s promises read from scripture. When you receive communion you can still taste bread and wine and trust that Christ is there, regardless of what your heart is doing. The water of baptism does not lose its power because you stopped feeling spiritual. God’s promises do not depend on your mood.
If God feels silent right now, please hear this. Silence is not absence. The fact that you cannot feel God does not mean God is not there. Some of the most faithful people who have ever lived spent decades in spiritual darkness, and God was working in them the whole time.
Keep praying, even if the prayers feel like they are hitting a ceiling. Keep showing up to worship, even if your heart is not in it. Keep turning, the way Mother Teresa did, in the only direction you know, so that when God speaks, you will be ready to hear.
God heard the cry of Jesus on the cross. God hears yours.
A Closing Prayer
Lord,
There are moments when we pray and hear only silence. When You feel far away and we wonder if anyone is listening. In those moments, our feelings can deceive us, and our faith grows thin. But You have not left us without Your presence. You have given us sure and certain places to find You. Meet us in Your Word. When we open the scriptures, remind us that we are not reading about a distant God, but hearing the living voice of One who still speaks. Cut through our doubt with Your truth. Meet us in our Baptism. When we feel forgotten, bring us back to the water to the moment You claimed us, named us, and promised that nothing could separate us from Your love. Remind us that our identity is not found in what we feel, but in what You have done. Meet us at Your Table. As we receive the bread and the cup, the body and blood of Your Son given for us, assure us that You are nearer than our next breath, that You still come to us, still feed us, still hold us. When silence surrounds us, Lord, anchor us to these gifts. You have bound Yourself to them so that we might always have somewhere to find You. Thank You for meeting us where we are. In Jesus’ name, Amen.