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18/05/2016

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Andrew Graystone.

2 minutes

Last on

Wed 18 May 2016 05:43

Script

Good morning.聽 Those of us who believe that God can speak have a responsibility also to face up to God鈥檚 silence.聽 No-one goes far on their spiritual journey without experiencing the hollow echo of nothingness that sometimes comes in answer to our prayers.聽 And few people have been more honest about this than the writer and theologian CS Lewis.聽 Reflecting on his grief at the loss of his wife he wrote:

鈥淲hen you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him...if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be 鈥 or so it feels 鈥 welcomed with open arms.聽 But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find?聽 A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.聽 After that, silence.聽 You may as well turn away.聽 The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.鈥

What, then, shall we do when God is silent?聽 Well, we have a simple choice: we can abandon hope, or we can go deeper into the silence.聽 This is a choice that people of faith have in common with those who don鈥檛 believe.聽 Indeed a great deal of faith comes down to this:聽 in the darkness and the silence, will we abandon hope, or will we walk on? In the words of John Greenleaf Whitier鈥檚 hymn 鈥楧ear Lord and Father of Mankind鈥


With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown
The tender whisper of Thy call,
As noiseless let Thy blessing fall
As fell Thy manna down.
Amen


[C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed (in The Complete C.S. Lewis, Signature Classics), p658]

Broadcast

  • Wed 18 May 2016 05:43

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