The Silence of God

Today, more than ever, I feel the deep brokenness of the world. That Man could do such things, such brutal, animal, cruel things to innocent children, makes one want to scream at the heavens, why? Why?

I am not one to ask why the world is broken, or what would have been if it was not - it is enough that it is. But I was sitting at the computer, wondering whether it was okay to be hurt about this. The world is broken, but am I allowed to doubt God? To ask why? If I believe in heaven, why does this hurt so much? Then I came to a song that I had heard many times, but as has so often happened before, this time I really listened.

The Silence of God

It's enough to drive a man crazy; it'll break a man's faith
It's enough to make him wonder if he's ever been sane
When he's bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod
And the heaven's only answer is the silence of God

It'll shake a man's timbers when he loses his heart
When he has to remember what broke him apart
This yoke may be easy, but this burden is not
When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of God

And if a man has got to listen to the voices of the mob
Who are reeling in the throes of all the happiness they've got
When they tell you all their troubles have been nailed up to that cross
Then what about the times when even followers get lost?

'Cause we all get lost sometimes...

There's a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll
In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold
And He's kneeling in the garden, as silent as a Stone
All His friends are sleeping and He's weeping all alone

And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not

The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God.

So ache, ache with all your heart. It is not supposed to be this way. Death has been conquered, it is not the end.

"There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
-Return of the King

All Things New

The world was good
The world is fallen
The world will be redeemed

O hold on to the promise
The stories are true
That Jesus makes all things new
The dawn is upon you

Rise up, O, you sleeper, awake,
The light of the dawn is upon you,
Rise up, O, you sleeper, awake
He makes all things new,
All things new.

Beyond the veil is a far green country, the New Jerusalem, which is so much better than Eden could ever be, because sometimes, being broken and re-made makes a thing more beautiful than it ever was whole.

The stories are true.