The Sounds of Silence…When God Tells Who God Is

Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said, “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?”

Job 38:1-2 

The endless cacophony between Job and his four friends is over and God essentially tells Job to be still: who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?” Indeed! And with that the LORD beckons His servant Job (42:7,8)—servant having the connotation of the one I trust, who worships me (Strong’s)—to come in close: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). You see, Job had to step away from his circumstances to know the One who was in control.

I laughed at myself as I read from Job 38 that snowy February day: “From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens when the waters become as hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?” (Job 38:29-30). The delicate twists and turns of those dripping icicles outside my window—I hadn’t seen such artful beauties in years—morphed first into the frozen ponds I skated on as a young girl, then into the icebergs in the bay of a small fishing village in Newfoundland. The tiny skiff we were riding in approached way-too-close, but oh what a glorious sculpture of turquoise and white. It took two frames for my photographer husband to capture its mass. 

I walk past those two iceberg canvasses in my hall every day, the translucence pulling me in. I do not take for granted the extent of their span as I transpose one upon the other in my mind. To think that ninety percent lies below the surface. I can see through the icicle; if only I could see into the depth of the iceberg.

As I wish to see the internal intricacies of that iceberg, I wish to know more about my God. Job did too. So God says to us both that in the silence He will speak and we will be amazed. And when God tells who God is, the depth of God below the surface is way more than we can see with our eyes.

Nancy P