Solitude and The Divine Silence
Thank you to all who have been praying since my last post. I recently had to spend a few days away from home, and this time away from the routine allowed me to spend a lot of my time in solitude. It was exactly what I needed in order for God to breathe new life into me. On the morning after I arrived, God met with me in my solitude and quietly led me to the Psalms of David.
Psalm 88.13-15
But I, O Lord, cry out to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14O Lord, why do you cast me off?
Why do you hide your face from me?
15Wretched and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am desperate.
Psalm 27.7
Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud,
be gracious to me and answer me!
8‘Come,’ my heart says, ‘seek his face!’
Your face, Lord, do I seek.
9 Do not hide your face from me.
Although my circumstances were very different from David’s, I found myself relating to his desire for God to meet with him, and with his frustration with the silence he was receiving from God. I don’t know whether God was silent or if I was deaf, but the effect was the same. I wanted desperately to hear from God. I was thirsty for His presence and hungered for His fellowship.
The Dread of Divine Abandonment
A haunting feeling of dread accompanied me all day long as I considered the possibility that God had abandoned me in my suffering. Had I sinned against God, causing Him to turn His back on me? What must I do in order to regain God’s favor? How do I repent if I have searched my heart and found no evidence of hostility against God and His ways? Was this all a result of my medication? Is it possible that the physical affect of a medication also affected my soul? Whatever the reason, I knew that I did not want to continue to feel as if God had abandoned me in my suffering.
The Divine Speaks!
After dinner that evening, I returned to my hotel room and began to seek God in my prayers. I was hoping to hear from God, and He was gracious. He led me once again to the Psalms of David where I read of His goodness.
Psalm 27.13-14
13I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
14Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!
Psalm 32.6-7
6Therefore let all who are faithful
offer prayer to you;
at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters
shall not reach them.
7You are a hiding-place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.
God had finally spoken the words of reassurance that I needed! God had not abandoned me at all- He had been there all along offering His deliverance. The problem was that, all along I had been seeking a deliverance from the very thing that He was asking me to embrace. I had been seeking a deliverance from pain, but He was offering deliverance from His silence.
Interlude: New Sensations
In recent weeks, I have started to feel some new sensations that were not previously a part of my symptoms. As I understand it, it is a part of the peripheral neuropathy that accompanies my disease. These sensations can best be described as a sharp and persistent burning pain. It is more like the burning sensation that you feel from touching a hot metallic object as opposed to the burn of hot water. If you have ever brushed up against a hot clothes iron while pressing your clothes you would recognize the sensation. As a matter of locality, they are occurring along the length of my arms, neck, back and face. They tend to last between 30 seconds and two minutes, but the residual pain persists for a few hours. As a result, I have been dreading the possibility that thid burning will continue to get worse. Quite frankly, I don’t like to feel like I am burning.
Conclusion: Delivered by Pain
There is a song that we used to sing in church. I don’t remember all of the words, but it says something along the lines of ” I want to hide where the blazing fire cannot burn me.” That line has been playing in my mind since I first started feeling these burning pains. As such, my prayer for the past few weeks has been for the burning to cease. However, as is usually the case, God has been trying to teach me something completely different through my suffering. When I first started experiencing the burning, that line from the song came immediately to mind, and for obvious reasons. However, I stopped too soon. I didn’t realize that God had placed the song in my mind as a reminder of where I am to hide… for the full sentence from the song says “I want to hide where the blazing fire cannot burn me- In your Presence O God!
To make matters worse, we sang that very song the Sunday before last… and I still managed to miss what God was telling me! Even when we sang the song in church (as an act of worship to God) my focus was on myself (as an act of worship to myself?). In singing the words to the song, I was so focused on my own ”blazing fire” , that I neglected to see that God was beckoning me to find comfort in His presence. I had bought into the lie that pain is evil- that it is something to be shunned. What I didn’t realize is that God gives us pain in order that we might draw into His presence. It is something that we must learn to embrace rather than shun. In doing so, we take our eyes off ourselves and come to discover the riches of His mercy and sufficient grace.
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