God is there and is not silent?

The invisibility of God?

This is a flower drawn by a small child and given to Kirsty. Lovely, can you tell me more about it? Yes, it’s a talking flower! And what is it saying? Pause. It’s written in invisible ink! Flowers and landscapes too are silent, having no voice, delivering no words, yet they do ‘speak’ of beauty, grandeur and wildness and have the power to impact me deeply. Thoughts inevitably turn to the rough times, of riots that erupt in our lives, as they have say in the various UK cities of late? What is written, spoken by God? The ‘video’ of rollers breaking across a map of the UK extinguishing city fires appears. Words too, from the title of a book, ‘God is there and is not silent'. Whatever is written may seem to be in invisible ink, more difficult to see perhaps, but there nevertheless I believe.

The silence of God?

I wonder if my faith journey hasn't been a little like Elijah's running back and forth from a desire for the tangible and dramatic (Mount Carmel) to the despair at an inactive God who speaks in and through the apparent nothingness yet depth of silence - the plea to 'rend the heavens' and the retreat to deserts and to silence. Oswald Chambers wrote that God's answers are often silences. Paul wrote that the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of men. Perhaps the silence of God is greater than the shouting and raging of wild men? Like waves throwing themselves against a patient cliff. Another prophet Habbakuk when faced with the prospect on the oncoming rapacious Babylonians finally exhales 'I will wait patiently...though the fig tree does not bud'. Is this merely sentimental, wishful thinking, a passive inertness? I ponder. What has my faith looked like and what does my faith look like now?