When heaven is silent

"I believe in the sun, even when it's not shining."

Walk with Me by Greg Olsen

The first time I learned that God speaks to His children, I was a young boy growing up in western Oregon. We were having a family picnic in the woods on a warm summer Saturday near a fast-moving river. At one point I walked down to the water to explore. I wasn’t gone more than 15 minutes before I returned to find my parents anxiously waiting for me. They made it clear I shouldn’t have gotten so close to the water without telling them where I had gone. I mumbled an apology, we finished our picnic, and then returned home. I quickly forgot all about the experience.

The next day was a Fast Sunday. During testimony meeting, my mother walked to the pulpit and stood to share her personal feelings about Jesus and her family. She then recounted the experience of the day before when I was lost and her initial feelings of terror when I couldn’t be found. She shared how she had found a quiet place to pray and in an intense outpouring of feeling, prayed for help to find me and whether or not I was okay. A clear and immediate peace came, assuring her that I was safe.

My experiences with God and prayer before this moment had been typical for a child. I believed because my parents believed. I had no reason not to believe. For the first time (or at least as far as I can remember these many years later) I began to think of God in personal terms and not as an abstract, distant Person.

It would be several years before I learned that prayers are not always answered in such an immediate and unmistakable way. Sometimes it can seem as if there is no answer at all.

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(I was unsure of what to title this post. “The silence of God?” “When prayers go unanswered”? “Is God listening”? Each option, including the one I chose, seemed inadequate. Is heaven really ever “silent”? Is there such a thing as an unanswered prayer, or is the problem that I either A. Don’t like the answer I received, or B. I couldn’t discern the answer?)

Of the many prayers I’ve offered in my life, a very small number would fall into the “unanswered” category. But those have also been instances where the answer seemed especially important.

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One of my favorite messages ever shared about receiving answers to prayer was given by Elder Richard G. Scott in 1989. He shared three different ways that prayers are answered: Yes, no, or an answer is withheld.

It is vitally important to recognize that the Lord also responds a third way to prayer by withholding an answer when the prayer is offered. Why would He do that?

He is our perfect Father. He loves us beyond our capacity to understand. He knows what is best for us. He sees the end from the beginning. He wants us to act to gain needed experience:

When He answers yes, it is to give us confidence.

When He answers no, it is to prevent error.

When He withholds an answer, it is to have us grow through faith in Him, obedience to His commandments, and a willingness to act on truth. We are expected to assume accountability by acting on a decision that is consistent with His teachings without prior confirmation. We are not to sit passively waiting or to murmur because the Lord has not spoken. We are to act.

Such a lovely thought. But also a sobering one.

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I recently read about the discovery of underground tunnels in Germany that had been used by Jewish refugees to hide from the Gestapo. An unnamed reporter visited the tunnels and shared the following experience:

“When I visited the shelter, I had the opportunity to see the emergency housing, fully equipped with a kitchen, bedroom, living room, radio, a small library, and oil lamps - evidence of a stunning experience. Meals could only be prepared at night so as not to attract the Gestapo's attention, who would have noticed the smoke during the day. Food had to be supplied by friends who willingly gave up a portion of their rations to help those unfortunate people living for weeks in utter darkness.”

The following inscription is written on the wall of one of these underground rooms, which in some ways resemble the Roman catacombs:

"I believe in the sun, though it be dark; I believe in God, though He be silent; I believe in neighborly love, though it be unable to reveal itself."

These profound words, written by an unknown man or woman during the Holocaust, later inspired the St. Olaf Festival in Norway to commission a beautiful piece of music titled “Even When He Is Silent.”

Here are three lines from that song:

I believe in the sun, even when it's not shining.

I believe in love, even when I feel it not.

I believe in God, even when He is silent.

Waiting on the Lord is sacred waiting. It is not easy. There can be painful moments of longing and pleading and spiritual agony as one waits and wonders why there’s no answer when the need seems so urgent. Sometimes the wait can extend for weeks, months, years. Perhaps even decades.

Mother Teresa experienced such a period of sustained divine silence. When I first learned about this, I felt such heartache for her. Her devotion was beyond question. She is rightly considered one of the most faithful and Christlike people ever to walk the earth. And yet, notwithstanding all this, she lived in the bittersweet space of prolonged waiting. Here, in her own words, is her painful soul cry:

In the darkness . . . Lord, my God, who am I that you should forsake me?  The child of your love — and now become as the most hated one. The one — you have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want, and there is no one to answer . . . Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.  Love — the word — it brings nothing.  I am told God lives in me — and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.

I cannot speak to Mother Teresa’s wrenching experience with any profound insights. I can simply say that for me, my own moments of waiting for answers have, over time, become some of the most important spiritual experiences of my life. These seasons of silence have become divine nudges for me to take needed steps into the dark. Sometimes, at least for a period of time, there has been no light at the end of the tunnel. The answer then, as it is so often, has been to keep walking.

I close with this simple but reassuring testimony, shared just this week with full-time missionaries by an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ:

“Your Heavenly Father knows you, and the hopes and desires of your heart. Wherever you are, as with me, He will speak to you in His own time and way, and if you’re sincere and willing to act on His answers, He will reveal to you what you desire to know.”

Elder D. Todd Christofferson