Ecclesiastes 12:6 Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed, Or the golden bowl is broken, Or the pitcher shattered at the fountain, Or the wheel broken at the well. NKJV
The Silent Witness
Recently I have been very sick. So sick that I have been as listless as a dying fish void of the last flap of its flipper. So sick, that I could do nothing but lay still and moan. So sick, that I wanted no visitors, which is good because no one came anyway. More importantly and most disturbingly for me though is the fact that not even God came to visit me in my sickness.
Some of you will say “Ah Robert, you just could not see Him, your sickness blinded you of His presence.” Maybe? Either way, His felt presence was not felt. His healing hand did not touch me. So in effect, even if He was there, He may as well not have been.
There is a deep mystery in the sometimes, seeming silence of God in the sickness of men and women. In this, God requires no defence, neither does He ask for any, for all sickness is a swirling fog of green and foul pestilent mists, that takes us regularly toward the edge of the same cold river that one day, will receive us when a final and fatal sickness will plunge us, yes each and every one of us, way, way above our necks, into its stiff rigor mortis running icy coldness. Sickness is a reminder, even a preparation for such cold passing and it regularly allows us a little sniff of what is to come. This is not a bad thing.
Such silent sicknesses challenges my faith, yet in a good way. For I emerge knowing that God is in light, God is in life, God is in the praises of His people, God is to be found in my day, God is to be sought after and rejoiced in, in the full and present measure of my health and strength. Yes, such silent sickness, is in fact a silent witness for us to live, should life once again come into these ever failing bodies of ours. I tell you what, if God doesn’t visit you in your sickness, make sure you’re banging on His door when you are well.
Listen: - My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning? O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; And in the night season, and am not silent. Psalms 22:1-2 NKJV
Pray:- You who fear the Lord, praise Him! All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him, and fear Him, all you offspring of Israel! For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from Him; but when He cried to Him, He heard. My praise shall be of You in the great assembly; --- All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord, And all the families of the nations shall worship before You. For the kingdom is the Lord's, and He rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth shall eat and worship; all those who go down to the dust shall bow before Him, Even he who cannot keep himself alive. A posterity shall serve Him. It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation, they will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, that He has done this. (from Psalms 22:23-31 NKJV)
No comments:
Post a Comment