silent no more!

It’s a weird thing, growing up. My brother is a big fellow. He’s four years older than I. He’s bigger than I am and he enjoyed beating on me when he got a chance. We never really had all the great of a relationship until the past 3 or 4 years. Ever since he got married…
Well I was at his house a couple of months ago and I witnessed the most amazing thing. His daughter- my niece- named Grace is a year and a half. And is awesome! She’s huge! Not like tubby- just really tall and in the 99 percentile for her age. And she’s really head strong – absolutely hilarious.
So when her mom or dad tell her not to climb on something, or not to get into a cupboard or what have you, she absolutely will. And she’ll just look so cute doing it too… So we were sitting in the living room of his house and Grace was playing. Then she started climbing up on the coffee table.
My brother said, “No, Grace!” and took her down. And again she tried to climb up. Kevin again said, “No,” and pulled her off. She started whining, at first but stopped. So we kept talking and not paying close attention to her. So Grace went to the other side of the table and climbed up. She almost had herself all the way on the table when she lost her grip and fell down.
She was BAWLING!!! Face red! Big ole’ tears.
Now I was like, “See! That’ll learn ya!”
But Kevin; big, bad, mean Kevin; the man who put my head – my HEAD – through the WALL of our basement when I was 12; the one who chased after me with a baseball bat when he found out I wore his sweater when I was in 8th grade…
THAT Kevin – swooped over to his weeping daughter and picked her up into his arms and hugged her close to his heart. He rocked back and forth and said over and over again, “Shhh, Gracie, it’s OK! Daddy’s got you! It’s OK, Gracie. Daddy’s here!”

He repeated this over and over. Grace had her arms wide as wide as they could go and the still only reached his shoulders. As she lay her head on his chest he tears subsided and there she was in her daddy’s arms. It was absolutely surreal!
I sat in wonderment at my how my brother is now a daddy. How he was so loving and caring as I watched him gently rock his hurting daughter.
Side note- He noticed me admiring the moment and broke the silence with, “What are you looking at moron? Go get me some chips.
I love my brother.

My favorite verse in the Bible is Zephaniah 3:17.
It is remarkable!
It says:
The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.

What God promises to do for His people my brother showed me in his living room. What did he do for his hurting daughter? Thhe same thing our Lord and God does to us each and every day – he quieted her with His love.

The all-powerful Creator of the universe – God – quieting us with his love. What an amazing picture!
As we all know, the Bible is divided into two parts – the Old Testament and the New Testament. But what for us is a very simple page turn is actually 400 years of silence. Four hundred years elapsed between the last prophet of the Old Testament and the New Testament era. Four hundred years and God said nothing to his chosen people. No new words, signs, warnings, or encouragements. No pillar of smoke by day. No pillar of fire by night. Nothing!
Total silence from the almighty God.
Now I don’t want to add to Scripture by any means. But I really don’t think it’s out of line to speculate on what those 400 years involved. If you hadn’t heard from your best friend in even a hundred years, don’t you think you might think he’s dead?
Or uninterested?

Or has moved on?

Don’t you?
Imagine what the Children of Israel must have thought. Generation after generation passed and nothing but silence. Their forefathers had prophets, and judges and kings, but for 400 years there was nothing! FOUR HUNDRED YEARS passed and not a peep from the Creator and Sustainer of the earth. How some must have cried out, “WHERE ARE YOU GOD???”
Sure, people would have the Scriptures and would know the promise. But just look at the cries of the people in Egypt, and Assyria, and Babylon, and God ALWAYS delivered them. But 400 years?! Maybe God had forgotten them, or chosen a new people, or had passed over them... 400 years of silence!
Then a teenage girl received the news that changed the world forever. But imagine the chaos in HER world.
If you were to come home and tell your parents that you had remained chaste but were still pregnant – by the Holy Spirit, of course – imagine the fall out. Imagine the snickers from the friends and the whispering of the neighbors. Even the most religious of scholars would scoff because the Savior was supposed to come as a mighty warrior on high, not as a Nazarene.

NOT ONLY THAT, but He decided to come at TAX TIME!!! And this wasn’t just a lick a stamp and put it in the mail tax day, either.
No! Mary – nine months pregnant – had to travel a great distance ON A DONKEY.
Now I’ve never been pregnant. But I’ve watched a Baby Story on TLC…
ON A DONKEY for days when you’re nine months Pregnant?!?!?!

Unreal!
And then no hotel room; only a stable – most likely a cave – filled with stinky loud animals and rough smelly hay.

But God chose that moment. He chose that day, that month, and that second – with THOSE PEOPLE; young, scared, worn down – to break his 400 year silence. Not with trumpets, or armies, or destruction. But rather He came with the cry of a baby laying in a feeding trough in Bethlehem.
Wow!

You want to see love? Look in that manger.

Jesus is the only person who ever lived who CHOSE to be born. And He CHOSE to be born so that he could live the perfect life that you and I couldn’t even begin to imagine coming close to living. He chose to be born so that he could show us the way to be at one with His righteous father. He chose to be born so that he could die for you and for me. He showed a selflessness and love that we can’t begin to fathom. Our God quieted the cries of His people with the love of a Savior whose death and resurrection sealed eternal life once and for all.

And now here we are: Christmas fast pursues; shopping lists; baking demands all pressing us.

Party schedules and concert times draining us. Not to mention family logistics, travel worries, and decoration preparations. The chaos and noise keep getting louder and louder.
But more than that: We have relationships crumbling, futures to plan, rumors to deal with, and homework to finish. And what about parents to please, rooms to clean, and tests to pass!
The pressure mounts! Then perhaps we face a car accident, or grim prognosis, or unexpected break up.

And we just throw up our hands and scream, “WHERE ARE YOU GOD???”

It seems as if he’s been silent for another 400 years in our lives

Which is when Zephaniah 3:17 speaks sweet grace into our hearts and minds:
The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.

Just as my brother took his little girl into his arms,
so too the nail-marked hands of Jesus are hugging us close to Himself.
He promises us to deliver us when we call upon Him in the day of trouble. He invites us to cast all our anxieties on HIM because he cares for us. He says that nothing – not life or death or angels or demons – nothing can separate us from the love He showed us in Christ Jesus.
Not only that, but He daily picks us up each and every time we falter and fall and He holds us in His arms and quiets us and through His word encourages us and lets us know that it WILL be OK. That the things of this earth will pass away, but His love endures forever. If God is for us, who can be against us!

And even though we approach Him as lowly desperate sinners, through Jesus’ blood He sees not the crimson of our transgressions, but the purity of His son. And our hearts and minds are quieted by His love. What a mighty God we serve!
So as you look into the manger this Christmas season, hear the almighty, all-knowing God breaking His silence through His Son Jesus. And know that our troubled hearts can only find peace in His quieting Love.

It was Love that broke that silence – Love came down on Christmas day – so that He could hang on a tree for you and for me. God be praised!