God Is Not Silent

I want to say, “God is not invisible or silent,” but I know that will immediately be misconstrued by those who don’t believe in God. But the truth is, Jesus came to earth as the manifestation of God. So the reality is, though God is a Spirit, He is not invisible. Jesus told His disciples that those who saw Him, saw the Father. Paul explained it this way in Colossians: “For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form” (2:9).

God also shows Himself in what He has made. The natural world is a great way to see God. He’s the One behind the beauty and majesty and grandeur and power and complexity in this world.

In addition, God has shown Himself through His prophets and through the Scriptures He inspired. He continues to show Himself through His people as they serve one another and as they care for the least and the lost and the excluded.

I’m reading a book by Joni Eareckson Tada and Steve Estes called When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty. In the opening chapter Joni describes an encounter she had with a group of Christians in Ghana. They were homeless paraplegics or worse. Yet the joy of the LORD was so evident in their lives. Here’s a short excerpt.

Out of a shadowed alley crawled two teenagers dragging their twisted legs. Polio survivors, I thought as they joined our group. We overtook a woman in tribal dress inching along in her rickety wheelchair. An eighty-year-old man, legless and no more than three feet high, hopped up on the curb and flashed a smile my way. I stopped. He waddled over and extended his stump of an arm to shake my hand. I leaned over to press my paralyzed fingers against his stump and we grinned at our odd handshake. We were pulled on by the singing and clapping up the street. As our group approached, the orphaned and homeless parted to welcome us in under the glare of a neon light. We had arrived in the center of a sidewalk worship service.

We westerners sat upright on benches, facing the ragtag crowd. “And now, Christian brothers and sisters,” shouted the pastor, “let us give a warm welcome to our most gracious friends from America…” Cheers erupted; then, a welcome song. The full rich drone of African harmony twisted my heart, and tears fell freely as we listened to the disabled people applaud each other’s testimonies and to the readings of Scripture. A half hour of constant praise passed easily …

The amazing thing here is that while Joni and her companions went to give to people in need, they ended up giving to her in ways that can’t be quantified. How so? By the joy that their lives showed, despite their circumstances. Yes, their hope is in heaven, but their joy today is anchored in their relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Their circumstances are horrible. They live in places most of us don’t want to even walk through. They have medical needs. They don’t all have wheelchairs or prosthetics. They don’t all have Bibles. They don’t all have the basics like food and clothing. But their joy is undeniable.

The world can’t understand such a thing. It makes no sense. Why would such poor people who are so disadvantaged, be joyful?

There is no answer apart from the fact that God’s love infuses their hearts, and they bubble over with gratitude for what they have.

Their Christianity is real, and because it is, others can see Jesus in their lives. God is visible, and He is not silent.

You can hear from Joni yourself. There’s a portion of this clip from Ghana which starts around the 13:30 mark. The whole video, though, speaks to the truth that God is not silent. “It’s worth anything to be His friend. Anything.”