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To you, Lord, I call; you are my Rock, do not turn a deaf ear to me. For if you remain silent, I will be like those who go down to the pit. … The Lord is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed one. Save your people and bless your inheritance; be their shepherd and carry them forever. (Psalm 28:1,8-9)

One of the most difficult realities of the Christian life is the experience of the apparent silence of God.  We don’t talk about it much, but it is a pervasive experience that most of us know.  The fact that we don’t talk about it can leave us with the impression that we are somehow alone in this: feeling abandoned while everyone else sings their heart out in worship.  It can also leave us feeling like we are somehow guilty of something or unfaithful: we can blame ourselves.

But the psalmist and all the Israelites who prayed this prayer through the ages knew all about the experience of God’s silence.  And together in community, they claimed it as part of the life of faith.  In praying prayers like psalm 28, they declared to God and with one another that it is not always because of our sin or unfaithfulness that we fail to hear from God.  Sometimes it is, but not always.  There are times when God is simply silent. 

Now, to say that it is a common experience is not to say that it is a pleasant one.  The psalm cries out to God: “if you remain silent, I will be like those who go down to the pit.”  In other words, the experience of silence and separation from God feels like death.  Which is perhaps why Paul in Thessalonians imagines hell in these terms: an eternal separation from God.  Because to be separated from God is hell.  It feels like death.  And the experience of God’s silence can feel eerily similar. 

But the life of faith is not only valleys.  There are also mountaintops.  And this is where the psalm closes.  The Lord is strength and salvation: a God who blesses, shepherds, and carries his people forever. 

In that last line there are echoes of the famous “footprints” poem, which perhaps helps to tie these two threads together.  At the end of life’s journey a person asks God why he was absent for long stretches—why she looks back and sees only one set of footprints in the sand—to which God replies: “it was then that I carried you.” 

God’s apparent silence and absence is a common experience, but it is not an accurate barometer of reality.  Our God is a God who carries his people forever.  A God of salvation and strength.  In those mountaintop moments we know this to be true.  But in the valleys where we aren’t so sure, we need to continue praying prayers like psalm 28 together so that we can remember these truths again and believe, despite what our eyes fail to see and our ears fail to hear.

May God continue to save his people and bless his inheritance, being our shepherd who carries us forever and who breaks those moments of apparent silence so that we might have life.