#RejoiceInHope: Let All The Earth Keep Silence

What is the meaning of this virus that has infected the earth and ground to a halt all activity? In particular, what is the Lord saying to us as churches at this time?

There are at least three things that the Lord has been putting in my heart and mind these past few days. Let me share these with you.

One is that famous text in Psalm 46: “Be still, and know that I am God.”

The second thing that is moving in my own heart is the need to gather inner strength, to make ourselves strong enough in these days of adversity.

The third word I am hearing is to trust God that in this time of waiting, he is working, even if we may not know as yet what he is doing. While we may be seeing many heartbreaking things, even unjust things going on around us, our God is strong and good and loving enough to do what he wills in these end times.

“Be still, and know that I am God”    (Psalm 46.10)

In the face of so much frenetic activity, -- all this business of getting and consuming, -- the Lord has allowed us all to be stopped in our tracks. This corona virus disease has led to the severe lockdown that we are experiencing now. It is forcing us to keep still, to hear God and hopefully know him better.

Bible scholars tell us that the original Hebrew word for ‘be still’ is literally, to ‘relax one’s grip,’ to let go of whatever it is that we are hanging on to or is occupying us. In Latin, we are told, ‘be still’ is translated as ‘vacare’, where we get the word ‘vacation.’

To me, and to those of us who carry great responsibility, this means that we learn to ‘vacate,’ to make that seat of responsibility empty. In doing so, we are told, we shall know God.  In vacating that seat, in allowing God to fully occupy the role we are so used to doing, we shall  behold God, and likely to be gifted with seeing more of who he is and what he can do.

Many of us want to know God. But we really do not take time to be still, to be present before God. Many churches and faith-based organizations put plenty of time and money on things like strategic planning, things that we think will be useful to our own work, but not on retreats and hearing God together. We are like an army rushing into the battlefield with our own plans, even before we have heard instructions from the center of command, our Lord God himself.  

We pray and ask for God’s presence, when the truth is that he is always there. It is actually us, his people, who are not really present, not attentive to whatever it is he is saying or doing. It needs a tragedy as colossal as a virulent pandemic to stop us dead in our tracks and make us pay attention.   

So what is it that the Lord wants us to hear at this time?

The Psalmist in this passage invites us to “Come and see the works of the Lord, the desolations he has brought on the earth.”   (Psalm 46.8)

My sensing is that part of the work the Lord is doing is to make us see our utter helplessness, the powerlessness of our tools as modern people to make our lives livable without God. Our technologies can only do so much; neither medical science nor sophisticated technical tools seem adequate in dealing with so massive a devastation as that brought by COVID 19.

For God’s people, it may be that we are being called to a deeper faith, to discover more deeply the God who, in a very strange way, is at work through the desolation.

We may not know at this point what he is doing through all the devastation now being wrought upon the earth. But in the end, we are told, it shall finally be revealed what this is all about. And then, God says, he shall be exalted among the nations. (Psalm 46.10b)

“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.”  (Proverbs 24.10)

When I first read this verse, I thought it was a bit of what in philosophy is called a tautology,-- that is, a bit obvious and redundant. When I thought a little more about it, I realized that it is in fact a call to be self-aware, to recognize that our strength is small if we cannot withstand the day of adversity.

Today, we are all experiencing extreme adversity. COVID 19 is testing our resilience, our ability to weather inactivity, not to mention hunger among our poor people and the ever-present threat of contamination. For the first time, we are locked down in our houses, with nothing to do but to watch the news, engage our friends and enemies in social media, or, like me, watch Netflix after cleaning up and clearing the cobwebs and all the junk that has accumulated in my back yard. Some are now losing their spiritual and mental health.

This space – this sudden vacuum and emptiness in our lives, -- may in fact be a gift. It is in confinement, what the Bible calls ‘askesis’ – that we learn to hear God.

We can view this enforced lockdown as isolation, or see it as solitude, a time when we can rest, sleep, pray, reflect and gather strength. As with the prophet Elijah, holed up in a cave, it may be that we are being given space to grow inside, to be ‘strong in the inner man’ as the Psalmist puts it.

Let us face it: even giants of the faith like Elijah goes through times when his spirit gets spent and the well runs dry. After the great contest of power on Mount Carmel against the prophets of Baal, Elijah gets exhausted, loses perspective and runs for his life at the mere threat of a woman like Jezebel.

The times demand that we grow strong in our own souls as churches. As the Church Father Cyprian said while beholding the crumbling of the Roman Empire: “Let us stand upright amid the ruins of the world, and not lie on the ground as those who have no hope.”

We may not be aware of it, but the Church – the Body of Christ – is the historic presence of Jesus on earth.  There is a great deal of talk these days about these being the end times. Well, it has been the end time since 2,000 years ago. Satan is finished, and he knows it. His time is short. What we are seeing these days is the intensification of the conflict between the Seed of the Woman and the Seed of the Serpent.

The Church of God is under extreme pressure. But the book of Revelation leaves us in no doubt about the outcome of this struggle. In the end, we are told, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 11.15)

We shall win this war.  But we need to be strong in the Lord, to “put on the whole armour of God” and be truly the church. The Church is not just a hospital for the walking wounded; it is an army tasked with storming the gates of hell – those walls that divide, those fortresses that shut out the poor and those courts of the powerful that routinely trample the rights of the needy and mete out injustice.

The Lord Jesus himself has promised: it is as we are truly a confessing church, witnessing to the reality that the Christ has come, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against us.

“For God alone my soul waits in silence.”  (Psalm 62.1)

In the NIV, this verse is translated as “My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him.”

In the original Hebrew, scholars tell us that the word translated as ‘rest’ also means ‘silence.’ Which ever way this is read, it is clear that it is in God alone that we find our rest as we listen to him in the silence. As we shut out the noise and the many distractions that occupy us, as we truly stop and wait on him, the fears and anxieties in our souls are quieted. We calm down, and in the depths of our souls we begin to feel assurance that truly, God is our salvation.

These days, there is so much suffering and grief and wrong that stares us in the face.

We hear our people crying out against disgusting politicians who take advantage of their power to be the first in line for testing, when so many are dying undiagnosed and untreated for lack of access to testing kits. Congressmen do a mere day’s work, ostensibly for our people, but more likely for their boss in Malacañang. At the end of the day, their leaders shamelessly posed for a photo op, likening themselves to the medical frontliners who risk their lives day in and day out fighting for their patients. A senator infected by the corona virus callously rides roughshod on hospital protocols and endangers a whole unit, further decimating the hospital staff attending to COVID 19 patients because they now have to be quarantined.    

And as always, the powers unthinkingly issue decrees that hit the poor the hardest. Those on ‘no work, no pay’ jobs are hungry, no money and no mass transport to buy food. The initiative to allow tricycle drivers to earn a little by transporting medical personnel gets quashed by those posing as guardians of public health and safety. They have now tightened the reins, perhaps in reaction to being upstaged by a young mayor in Pasig who has shown competence and imagination in facing this crisis. The President has now asked for an unprecedented power of the purse, with sole authority to reallocate massive funds.

All these make us feel hopeless. We are ruled by a government that is not only incompetent but again and again has been shown to be callously unjust. This feeling is not new; it is a theme that runs through many of the Psalms.

But in this Psalm, David tells us: “Trust God, my friends, and always tell him each one of your concerns. God is our place of safety.” (Psalm 62.8, CEV)

We can trust God because we can be sure of two things about him: that he is strong, and that he is loving and good. (Psalm 62.11-12)

Usually, people who are strong and powerful are not good, and those who are good are weak and powerless.

God is strong, and he is good, and loves us especially. This is why it is in God alone, not in government or in any other power, that we rest. In Jesus, we are told, “all things hold together.”  (Colossians 1.17)

 We may not know the why and wherefore of all that is happening to us. But we can trust and rest in this God who has power to hold all things together, working for our good and loving us through the silence.

- Dr. Melba Maggay

You can watch the video version here

A writer and a social anthropologist, Melba Padilla Maggay holds a doctorate in Philippine Studies, a masteral degree in English Literature, and a first degree in Mass Communication. Dr. Maggay has also written numerous books and articles on social, cultural and theological issues, published here and globally.  She is also the author of the book Living Faithfully in a Multicultural World published by OMF Literature.

She currently sits in the governing boards of a number of NGOs and church organizations including the Center for Community Transformation, the Knowledge Center for Religion and Development in The Netherlands and the International Council of InterServe.