Can you hear me now?

I hate one-sided conversations. Maybe it’s just me, but there is very little more annoying than having to feign interest by plastering on a half-hearted smile and semi-engaged stare-into-nothingness while your “conversation” partner is experiencing diarrhea of the mouth. We’ve all been there, and it’s not fun.

But you know what is equally gut-wrenching?

Those times when the person across the table just sits there in silence, barely saying a word, where your best efforts fail to draw out even a three syllable mumble. You feel like you’re talking to a brick wall, or a tree, or a tree surrounded by a brick wall. I can be awkward and uncomfortable, or frustrating, or just bang-your-head-against-a-wall-to-add-some-excitement DULL. My guess is we’ve all been there before, too.

So what do you do when the silent person sitting across the table from you is none other than God himself? Hmm. That sounded like a good question, but now that I’ve asked it the answer seems obvious: you wait. He is God after all, and it’s not like you or I have a whole lot of leverage to pressure him into a response. But seriously, that’s what I’ve been struggling with for the past few weeks. If you’ve read some of my recent posts you know that for several months I felt a very clear sense of God leading me to take a huge step of faith away from the church I love (that also just happened to be my source of income) without having any clue whatsoever what the next step was. Was it scary? Sure! Like walking barefoot through a well-used Bessy Bingo playing field in the dark. But it was also exciting because I was certain that God was calling me to do it and that he would show me the next step. That was January 31.

The next day (naturally) was February 1. And everything changed. Well, ok, at least one thing changed.

I don’t know if Verizon dropped my call or what the deal is, but it has seemed that God has been rather silent since then. For illustration purposes, let me show you a comparison.

January 31 = Crystal clear connection.
February 1 = Silence. Nothing. Nada. Nessuno.

So as I’m trying to plan for the future, even the short-term future, it’s tough because not only do I not feel especially called to do anything in particular, I also don’t feel especially called to do nothing. So it sort of feels like trying to swim through a giant lake of tapioca pudding… minus the inability to breath tapioca.

And I’d be lying it I said it wasn’t testing me faith a little. I have found myself thinking, “God, really? What the heck. All of that build-up for this? Talk about anticlimactic! Will you just give me some direction already?” And as I’ve taken a step back, I’ve pictured God saying, “Really, that’s all you’ve got? Three weeks and you’re already flaming out?”

And that got me thinking about the Israelites. After centuries of praying for freedom, God answered their prayers and they launched out of captivity in Egypt like a jet-propelled hippo… only to come plummeting back down to earth as doubt and impatience and a lack of trust caused them to turn their backs on God and take matters into their own hands. Thplat! (That’s my attempt at describing what happens when a previously jet-propelled hippo hits the ground. It’s a combination of “thud” and “splat.”) If you remember their plight, a two year journey to the amazing Promised Land that God had been preparing for them became a forty year saga in which an entire generation had to die out before the promise became a reality. It was an ugly scene… not unlike an exploding hippo.

Think of what their lack of trust cost them. In a word: everything! As I’ve been pondering this I’ve started thinking that maybe the greatest test of faith isn’t obeying God when the path is clear and the call is certain and you feel inseparably close to him, but maybe it’s trusting God and believing God when the path ahead isn’t clear and the call isn’t certain and it seems like God is silent and distant. Maybe the real proof of a strong faith is being willing to continue grappling for answers and seeking God in the face of uncertainty, in the midst of impatience, and in the presence of doubt, when the sum total of what we have seen and experienced and know carries us through the rough patches, and the depth of our faith holds strong through the ebb and flow of our feelings and emotions.

Interestingly enough, it's been during the most challenging and even spiritually dead-feeling times in my life that I have grown the most. I'm not sure why that is, but it's true for me. More on that another time, though.

PS. Watch out for falling hippos.