“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.”
Mother Teresa
From the time Adam and Eve were cast from the Garden of Eden, God worked to gather the attention of His people. He offered them laws, Kings, Prophets, Judges and miracles. He truly asked only one thing of them: that they worship Him and Him alone. During this time, He was patient with them and taught them ways to worship Him. When they rebelled against His love time and time again, He exiled them from their promised land. It was not until He returned Judah from captivity that the rest of His children stopped their worship of idols and returned to worshiping only God. But still, they were not ready for the Messiah.
For four hundred years, God reigned in silence. His people worshiped Him instead of idols; but He knew they still needed to mature. They remained sinful in many ways, and they were not ready to receive the glory of the Savior. God sat back and quietly prepared the way of the Lord while His children continued to grow. Finally, He called John the Baptist to break the prophetic silence; he was used to prepare the hearts and minds of God’s children for the arrival of the Lord.
This quiet period between Judah’s return from captivity and John the Baptist’s early teaching is an interesting period in biblical history. It reminds us that preparations do not have to be loud, boisterous, attention getters. We do not have to announce to the world the things that we are doing; we merely have to go about our business and be prepared to answer His call. God works in the loud moments, but He works in the silence too. Are we listening?