Silence Is Not Absence

There are seasons in life when God feels quiet. We pray, we wait, we try to listen, and nothing seems to happen. No clear direction. No sudden insight. Just ordinary days stacking up one after another. When that happens, it is easy to wonder whether God has stepped back, or whether we have somehow missed something.

Scripture takes that experience seriously. It does not rush past it or explain it away. In fact, there is a long stretch in the Bible that mirrors this very feeling. Between the prophet Malachi and the opening chapters of the New Testament lies roughly four hundred years of silence. No new prophetic word. No dramatic intervention. Just life going on.

That span of time is older than our country. Older than any of us. And yet, it may be the period of Israel’s history that most closely resembles our own.

Before that silence, God’s people returned from exile in Babylon. The return should have felt like a victory parade. God had promised they would come home, and He kept that promise. But what they found was not a restored kingdom. They returned to rubble, danger, and uncertainty. The temple, when rebuilt, was so modest that those who remembered the former one wept. The promise was fulfilled, but it felt small and incomplete.

And then, nothing. No prophet. No new word. Four centuries of quiet.

If we are honest, that is where most of life is lived. We do not leap from miracle to miracle. We do not receive daily instructions whispered into our ears. Instead, we experience a mix of joys and losses, blessings and disappointments, clarity and confusion. We live in what the church has long called “ordinary time.” Most of the church year is ordinary time. Most of our lives are, too.

It would be a mistake, though, to confuse silence with absence.

The psalms give voice to the ache we feel in quiet seasons. “How long, O Lord?” the psalmist cries. “Will you forget me forever?” That question is not faithless. It is human. Scripture allows us to speak honestly about the pain of waiting without suggesting that God has stopped being faithful.

Again and again, the Bible bears witness to this truth. God is at work even when we cannot see it.

The book of Esther offers a glimpse of this hidden work. God’s name is never mentioned explicitly, yet His presence is unmistakable in hindsight. Esther finds herself in a position of influence at a critical moment, and her uncle asks, “Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Notice the humility of that question. It does not claim certainty. It simply trusts that God may be at work in ways that are not yet obvious.

That trust becomes especially important when we realize that God rarely shows us the full plan.

Behind my house, an apartment complex is being built. For months, it has looked like little more than heavy equipment moving dirt around. Day after day, the work appears repetitive and slow. But anyone familiar with construction knows that this site work is essential. Without it, the building will not last. And when the groundwork is finally complete, the structures seem to rise almost overnight.

The four hundred years of silence before Christ were not wasted time. They were preparation. As the apostle Paul puts it, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son.” That phrase, “the fullness of time,” suggests intention, not delay. God was not idle. He was preparing the world for the Messiah.

The difference between construction and faith, of course, is that builders get blueprints. Workers can check timelines, dependencies, and progress reports. We do not get that luxury. God says, “I know the plans I have for you.” He does not say, “I will show them to you.”

That is what makes us people of faith.

Most of our lives are spent in ordinary faithfulness. We worship. We study Scripture. We love the people around us. We try, sometimes imperfectly, to do what God asks of us in the moment. That kind of faith may not feel dramatic, but it matters deeply to God.

Zechariah’s story makes this clear. When the angel appears to announce the coming of John the Baptist, Zechariah is not doing anything extraordinary. He is serving in the temple, performing his assigned duties. Everything is ordinary until it suddenly is not. God breaks the silence not through spectacle, but through a faithful person doing an ordinary task.

That pattern continues throughout Scripture and into our own lives. God’s most important work is often hidden inside routines that feel unremarkable.

This brings us to the heart of the matter. Contentment.

Contentment is often misunderstood. It is not pretending that everything is fine. It is not resignation or emotional numbness. And it does not grow out of understanding all that God is doing. Contentment grows from trust.

The order matters.

Contentment does not lead us to trust God. Trust in God leads us to contentment.

The apostle Paul writes that he has learned to be content in whatever situation he finds himself. That learning did not come from ease or clarity. It came from walking in trust, again and again, through ordinary days and difficult seasons.

Sometimes it helps to say that truth out loud, even to ourselves. I trust. Therefore, I am content.

Trust and hope walk together. When we trust that God is at work, even when we cannot see it, hope takes root. Not a loud or frantic hope, but a steady one. The kind that sustains ordinary life.

All of God’s long, quiet work leads us, finally, to Bethlehem.

When God’s plan reaches its fulfillment, it does not arrive with a parade. The Messiah is born in a small town, to an ordinary couple, with no room at the inn. The setting is so humble it borders on the unnoticed. Angels appear, but to shepherds, the lowest on the social ladder.

Ordinary time leads to Bethlehem.

And it does not stop there. God continues to work through ordinary means. Water in baptism. Bread and wine in communion. Simple elements through which God does extraordinary things.

Jesus himself reminds us, “My Father is always at work.” That was true during the four hundred years of silence. It is true now.

Silence is not absence.

God is at work. Even here. Even now. Even in the ordinary.