Silence gives way to silence. Absence gives way to presence.

This is a letter that I wrote and old friend. He and I don't see much of one another in this season of our lives. I am aware that the past few years have been quite difficult for him for a variety of reasons. His wife asked myself and a handful of other men to write him a note of encouragement. This is what came out. The Lord ministered to me deeply through listening to him in order to write it. I needed to receive what was wrote as much as my friend. thought I'd pass it along. Below is the letter.

To be honest I have really struggled to know what to put on this page, knowing from a somewhat safe distance that much of the past few years have been a struggle, one which at times has left you quite speechless and directionless. It seems arrogant or insensitive to write you a “note of encouragement” when I truly am so relatively uninvolved in your day-to-day life and journey. That said, I hope this note will come to you not as anything but a letter from a fellow pilgrim, who has journeyed through some long and low seasons at this point, who longs to rally hope in your heart. The handful of times the Lord has given us over the past few years I have always enjoyed and He has impressed upon me in those times the deep weight of the somewhat undefined struggle that marks this season of your life, vocation, and marriage. I remember being on the farm, after being, for all realistic purposes, fired from Christ Pres, knee deep in hog shit cleaning a hog barn, and feeling so lonely and sad that I was unsure of everything in my life. I remember many times falling to my knees in complete isolation screaming at God for answers to my questions, so broken down at that point that even posturing myself reverently before God was a complete impossibility. I was so fucking scared. I wondered if this was the rest of my life. For many days my cries were met with silence. Many days.

Sometime, there wasn’t a particular day, or even event, but something slowly began to give way. I was out of tears and out of words. I was finally silent. Finally quiet. Done talking, thinking, processing, wrestling, arguing, demanding, expecting. God’s silence gave way to my silence and I was finally able to hear Him, maybe for the first time. When I started to hear, it wasn’t big sentences or even answers to any of the questions I had been asking, in fact, all the sudden He was asking the questions. They were deeper questions, ones that penetrated my questions. Questions that left me silent, left me in a posture to receive not the answers, but finally experience He who is behind all questions and answers. This was something I had never before experienced. It was something that slowly and painstakingly over time became life to me in that season. Jesus, for possibly the first time, had broken into my life, slowly, painfully, broken through. In spite of me, my arrogance, my self-sufficiency, my pride, he broke through. He led me through suffering to silence and I finally heard His voice. And the fact that I actually heard all of the sudden was more important than what I heard. Just hearing brought a new sense of joy and peace untied to my need for answers. We started this long walk. Along the way Jesus has addressed some of the things I was pleading about. Many of those things are still uncertain. The difference is his presence in the silence, and the growing experiential reality that his presence was what all my pleading was truly all about. And so we walk.
Praying that God’s silence will give way to yours. That you could rest there. Experiencing Jesus in that silence, and the peace that comes with his presence. You’re not alone. Dave – Psalm 46:10

“ Beneath our clothes, our reputations, our pretensions, beneath our religion or our lack of it, we are all vulnerable both to the storm without and the storm within, and of we are ever to find true shelter, it is with the recognition of our tragic nakedness and need for true shelter that we have to start. Thus it seems to me that this is also where anyone who preaches the gospel has to start too- after the silence that is truth comes the news that is bad before it is good, the word that is tragedy before it is comedy because it strips us bare in order to ultimately clothe us.” -Frederick Buechner