Episode 129 - The Day God Was Silent

Of all the celebrations throughout the year, Easter has to be my favourite. I love different aspects of all the others, but the simple matter is that Easter is the most important. It’s the day that we remember all that God has done for us; making a way for us to know Him by His son taking on the punishment for our mistakes by dying on a cross. It’s the centre point of history and the point around which history revolves. It’s the point at which the greatest most impossible victory was won for us. There are three days of the Easter celebration; Easter Friday when Jesus died, Easter Sunday when Jesus rose again and Easter Monday when we all get a day off work (that last one was a joke, but a joke with a purpose). 

The third day is Easter Saturday, a day that we often forget about, but it’s a day that means a lot to me, a day that is sometimes referred to as the day that God was silent. You see, in the middle of this most incredible event that sits in the middle of time itself, there is a day in which nothing seems to happen. Jesus has died but not yet been raised to life. And there is a day where God seems to do nothing. At the very centre point of time, everything stops. Jesus’s followers have just seen one of their best friends killed for a crime He didn’t commit. And in the midst of coping with that loss they have to come to terms with what seems to be an even greater and more perplexing loss. 

The person they (correctly) thought was the messiah had been killed without achieving all that the messiah came to do. They had poured their lives and souls into this truth and now He appeared to be defeated and they appeared to be wrong. And God said nothing. And they could be forgiven for thinking that God was doing nothing either. Yet, in the middle of all this, God was working out the salvation for all mankind. He was silently doing the most incredible thing in human history, turning what seemed to be its greatest defeat into its greatest victory. Between Jesus’ death and resurrection, He was doing everything that had to be done to pay the price for our mistakes. And humanity had no idea.

One of my favourite stories in the Bible is that of Balaam’s Ass, largely because it involves a talking donkey. It’s an incredible story of awe and wonder telling the incredible lengths God goes to to protect the children of Israel. But for me the most incredible thing about the whole story is not the talking Donkey, but that for all the wonderful things God does, the Children of Israel are completely unaware of them all and were intended to be so. Life for them just continued as normal, they didn’t even know of the threat let alone the lengths God went to to keep them safe. I often wonder how much God must do for me without me even knowing.

There have been many times in my life where I have felt completely overwhelmed and in over my head, where I have cried out to God and He seemed to be silent. But looking back, those times were when He did some of the most incredible things, I just couldn’t see them. I imagine that for many of us life in the Pandemic must feel like a time of Gods silence, but whenever it does remember what God did nearly 2000 years ago at the very centre point of time.