Sometimes God is completely silent. Prayer requests go unanswered. Heart-felt supplications seem to fall hard on deaf ears. The ugly situation you want gone, lingers. The frustration, fear, depression, anxiety and health condition, appear to worsen with every prayer said. Those faith sapping moments when the desperate hope for a miracle, the earnest cry for a lifeline, the faith-filled confessions, sacrificial seeds sown and almsgiving done does not seem to move the hand or mind of God on a matter. Today I recall one of those painful moments.
I was very young when I heard the voice of my father that early afternoon. I was very surprised as he was never at home usually till late evening. It was only when I came out to embrace him downstairs did I understand why. What I saw moved me to tears. I saw blood oozing freely from his lower leg and it was clear he had a terrible accident. The wound sustained from that accident would change the course of his life significantly.
For the next 15 years, he went from one hospital to another seeking treatment. He was neither diabetic nor having a pre-existing medical condition that prevented the wound from healing. Yet, all the best medical efforts money could buy was not able to proffer any solution. His health deteriorated and so did his finances. As medical bills piled up in millions, his chain of businesses liquidated, his choice properties sold off, and the throng of friends that flocked our home every other day slowly and completely disappeared. Our menu also changed, from the usual chicken every Sunday, we settled for iced fish and ‘puff-puff’ was a choice breakfast option. The wound would become gangrenous, and my agile man of a father became very sedentary and in need of aided mobility. Eventually, he became confined to a chair.
Desperate in search for a solution. He moved from one prayer house to another. Our home soon became a place of prayer, fasting, supplications and endless cry to God for desperate change. I personally changed my denomination from Catholicism to Christ Embassy just to bring in more prayer power home. We all prayed, every day, every night. Booked mass, sowed seeds, gave alms and made endless prayer vows. I stretched my faith like the biblical Abraham and hoped that my ‘Isaac’ in form of healing would come. Yet, nothing seemed to change.
Every night for 7 years without fail, my father would pray, read the bible for more than two hours. He would always tell me on phone when I called him that God said he would heal him. Yet, God seemed silent to all his sufferings, pain, anguish and cry. That wound never healed. His health would eventually worsen and he became even more dependent for mobility and daily cares till he passed on ten days before his 60th birthday.
Today, as I went through my old phone, I saw some of our messages and therein, I found reasons to understand his unrelenting, unwavering and unshaken faith and hope in God in those years when it seemed to me that God was silent to his ordeal. One of the messages read, ‘The silence of God does not mean he is not working’ and another message read, ‘prayer does not change everything rather it changes us to change everything’. One other message read, ‘Life is not without challenges and God cannot give to you what you cannot carry’.
As I recall these memories, I am forced to conclude that silence must be one of the many languages of God. Sometimes, he is loud so you can hear. Often times, he is soft-spoken so you can listen. A times, he is silent so that the ‘God’ in us can rise.
In all these I have learnt that in good times, trust God. In silence, trust God more.
