Into the Wilderness: Day 11

“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord,
but they will not find it.” Amos 8:11-12

While walking the wilderness road we find ourselves in desperate need to hear a word. What do we do when that word goes silent? Sometimes I find myself speaking FOR God. Sometimes I speak for him because I’m afraid he will, but sometimes I speak because I’m afraid he wont. Over the years, however, Ive become much more comfortable living within the silence. Into the silent land is where I am able to distinguish all the words that I have set in place of God’s words; words that turn out to be my words, my expectations, my world’s expectations, my world’s assumptions about what words bring life. Maybe my ache to hear a word out of the silence is actually the empty place left by all those empty promises that I had assumed would be filled by the noise of the world.

God of the silent land, may hope be enough to keep me walking when I realize the noise of the world can’t fill the deepest void within me. A void only filled by the deafening silence of your presence. Amen