When God Feels Silent

There are seasons when heaven seems to go quiet. You pray, but the words feel heavy, as if they fall just short of the stars. You read Scripture and the pages sit still, almost like they’re holding their breath. It can feel like calling through fog—waiting for an echo that doesn’t return. And yet the quiet has its own pull. If I stay with it, the silence begins to ask me kinder questions: What am I really seeking—answers, or Him? Am I willing to be held without an explanation?

I remember one of those seasons beside the Stanislaus River. Even the drive down felt like a parable. The road was long and steep, a narrow ribbon with rock wall on one side and open cliff on the other. We rode the brakes and prayed with every turn—one car at a time, no room to pass, no way to hurry. By the time we reached the bottom, my hands were tired from holding the wheel, and my heart was tired from holding its breath. “The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in” (Psalm 121:8) felt less like a verse on a page and more like a plea laid into the curve of the mountain.

The campground was nestled right along the riverbank. The children were everywhere—running, laughing, skipping rocks, inventing games only children understand. Their joy rang across the water like bright bells. I walked down to the edge of the river and watched the moon lay a silver path across its surface. The current moved quietly but with strength, threading light through the shadows. I wanted to speak a prayer out loud, but something in me softened and waited. Even with the sound of my children’s laughter behind me, the quiet ahead felt full—like a held breath before a word you know is coming.

What I learned there is simple and hard at once: God’s silence isn’t His absence—it’s His depth. Beneath the rippling surface, the river was alive—fish stirring, roots drinking, night moving along its hidden paths. In the same way, when the surface of life stills—or even when the day is ringed with the ordinary noise of family and chores—God is at work below what I can see. “Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation” (Psalm 62:1). Waiting, I’m finding, is not empty time; it is trusting time.

There is a quieter strength that grows here. Not the rush of quick solutions, but the steadiness to keep step and keep faith. Sometimes I picture my soul learning to rest like a weaned child—no bargaining, no clutching, just settled: “Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother” (Psalm 131:2). That kind of quiet does not pretend; it consents. It lets God be God while I stay near.

And when I cannot trace Him, I hold this: “He knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10). I don’t always know the way He takes with me, but He knows the way I take with Him. The thought steadies me. It keeps me from reading stillness as distance. It may be that something holy is being shaped just beyond sight.

If this is one of your quiet seasons, don’t rush to fill it. Let the hush teach you to lean, not to run. Keep small company with the Lord—wash the dishes with a whispered “thank You,” linger one more minute over a verse, step outside and breathe. Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is stand by the river—with laughter behind you and a hard road behind that—and trust that the deep is moving. In time, the word you’re waiting for will come, and even if it comes softly, you’ll know it by the weight of peace it leaves.

If this Fireside Chat warmed your spirit and sparked fresh resolve to live what you believe, fan that flame with Scripture—“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16). Pull a little closer to the Light, and carry it into the week ahead.

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