Choosing Trust in the Silence
I don’t (and never could) understand everything about God. But I can trust the God who is revealed in Jesus—the God who has never looked down on suffering from a lofty throne but has always looked into the eyes of the suffering from level ground. I can trust the God who refuses to offer platitudes from a safe distance, the God who descends into the mess with me. All the biblical highlights, the moments of God’s glorious interventions, were preceded by someone choosing trust. The subtext behind every miracle, the soundtrack beneath the life of every saint, is a defiant and courageous choice in the face of the dark experience of God’s absence and silence: “I choose trust.” C. S. Lewis names this choice as the great defiance from which redemption springs: “Our [Satan and his minions] cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
—Tyler Staton, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools
We will never understand everything about God—but we can trust the God revealed in Jesus. He doesn’t watch our suffering from a safe distance; He steps into it, meeting us face-to-face in the mess. Throughout Scripture, every great act of God was preceded by someone making a choice—often in the dark, often without answers—to trust Him anyway.
C.S. Lewis called this trust in the face of God’s apparent absence “the great defiance from which redemption springs.” When we feel abandoned, when the silence is deafening, we can still say, “I choose trust.” In that choice, we stand in the same place where miracles begin—shoulder to shoulder with the God who never leaves us, even when we can’t see Him. —DH
—David Hoskins, Founder & Care Guide, Sanctuary Clinics