Belmont University Advent GuideMuestra

Both Psalm 31 and 35 reveal a human personality caught in the movements of great stress. In pleas, praises, and declarations, in promises and admonitions, the poems display the undulating emotions of a person struggling to make sense of his or her situation.

Two lines from each Psalm put the writer’s suffering in perspective. In Psalm 31, the writer calls out to God, “Incline your ear to me” (v. 2). In Psalm 35, the writer pleads with God, “Do not be silent!” (v. 22)

Spiritual writer Belden Lane writes of the “indifference of God” in The Solace of Fierce Landscapes. God is, in scripture, often a silent God. Silent even as the vast expanses of creation shaped by wind and water and fire speak for God, as Elijah experienced.

It is in this silence, he writes, that God’s love is encountered.

He describes leaning out over the edge of a canyon grasping a tree, watching the hawks circle in the air currents. He is at the same time fearful and wrapped in love. How? The indifference of the rock, flora, and fauna to his fate if he fell—this silence that renders us vulnerable to the mystery of God—brings intimacy with himself and the creator’s silent word of love.

We do not know much about the psalmist and the enemies at the gate, whether they are real or perceived. What we do know, however, is that the emotions expressed are real, for us. And like the psalmist, we need someone to hear us, and for them to confirm they hear us.

Lane reminds us that people of wilderness faiths—faiths formed by mountains, desert, and rough terrain—celebrate, oddly enough “a sense of God’s indifference to all the assorted hand-wringing anxieties of human life.” The embrace of this void undercuts an incessant self-absorption that preoccupies our minds, he says.

We want God to incline God’s ear to us . . . to break silence and get involved in our lives. To worry about what we worry about, whether real or perceived. Perhaps, however, the assurance of God’s love is found in God’s refusal to feed into our anxieties.

Should we be grateful that God is often silent in the never-ending tragedies and calamities of human life? Is this why we sing, “Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by?” Perhaps the silent night of long ago assures us of God’s presence.

Andy Watts
Associate Professor of Religion