"Silence" Advent Devotional 5 December 2024

Sometimes silence is a gift. We are particularly aware of this when we are in seasons of life filled with noise. Many times, though, silence is not an experience we embrace. Sometimes it feels like punishment. How many of you have been on the receiving end of cold silence from someone as payback for something you said or did? Or maybe you dish that out in your relationships. Or silence can be ominous, like the eerie quiet that precedes a major storm. Or it can be long and boring . . . dark and scary . . . heavy and depressing.
That is the kind of silence that the people of Israel knew in the centuries before Jesus’ birth. That is right! Centuries elapsed between when the last prophet recorded in the Old Testament spoke until Jesus’ birth. It was a dark time . . . a difficult time . . . a time when God seemed silent. The people were in physical exile as their homeland was occupied by foreign powers. Surely they felt in spiritual exile from God as well--abandoned, isolated and alone.