God's Silent Voice

God's voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding. --Job 37:5

Many people think that God does not speak to His people. Some think that at best, He may have spoken to the people mentioned in the Bible (Moses, Elijah and so forth) but since those days they believe Him to have been relatively silent. Some may argue that if God truly wanted to communicate with His people He would do so in an audible, unmistakably clear voice.

I happen to think that God moves not only in mysterious ways, but in silent ones. He spoke the world into being, but it is the silent aspect of His conversations with his creation that keep our earth ever changing and ever moving. Wordlessly, he tells the flowers when to bloom, the clouds when to rain, and the moon when to shine. He communicates His love to us in something that is quieter than the softest of whispers.

Today one of my co-workers shared with me his idea that our efforts to create words to represent our thoughts and feelings do a great disservice to the very essence of those thoughts and feelings. He said there is a distinct piece of our self that gets lost when we use words. At some point, too many words can even result in emotional exhaustion or frustration.

As I thought about that, I wondered if maybe that is why God, for the most part, doesn't use audible words. Maybe we can understand Him--His heart, His being--by tuning in to the ways he speaks to us in silence.