The Silent In-Between

Maybe it’s my middle child syndrome, but I’ve learned to pay attention to the in-between. Oppose it, resist it, thwart it- sure. But finally, accept it as ‘a place’ more than an ‘out of place’. And then even rejoice in the spot of an outlier; an observer; a wonderer; an identifier; a scriber. 

So, it stands to reason that the Saturday of Holy Week, while the most still, speaks the loudest to me. 

I wonder a-lot about the day. 

I wonder if it felt like a thousand years. 

I wonder about it as I wonder about the 400 years between the old and new testaments. Was He really silent? Or was He speaking volumes.

I’ve learned to pay attention to the bereft moments, where the heart is still and can hear without ears. 

Like personal communion with the pastor on Thursday 

Like the way we didn’t want to speak after re-living the Passion on Friday 

Like when you lay your head on your pillow at night, nothing left to distract 

Like after you’ve spoken His word and what He sometimes does with it in between when it left your mouth and reached an ear (like one of our brilliant church children described that was more perfect than I’ve ever heard: “it’s like magic, but not, because it’s real.” -Ellie P.)

Like when you look around the upside-down world for the place you thought you knew… roving for signs of life…anywhere 

I suppose God is always speaking and the listening part is the thing to get to. I’ve never heard Him quite like I have in the silence of a sunset. Or surrounded by nothing but damp trees. Or in a perfect short sentence that holds not the power of the word of God but that you were no less meant to read. 

The absence of cacophony is resounding. 

Watch for it. Wait for it. Identify it. Observe it.  Rejoice in it. 

“… and I believe that this in itself is a word from God, that this is the sound that God's voice makes in a world that has explained him away.  In such a world, I suspect that maybe God speaks to us most clearly through his silence, his absence, so that we know him best through our missing him.” - Frederick Buechner