Silence

When I began to pray,
I resented God’s silence.
If I prayed for a new car,
I assumed I deserved it.
But it became deafening
when it was the response to more noble requests.
Please protect my wife today
because she teaches in a school.
Please give my children strength to learn and grow
in a world that begs them to be blind and small.
Please show me Your will,
so I can live by it, instead of my own.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.

Though I don't relish it (yet),
now I see that silence is God’s answer—
that silence is God, of God.
Most answers are small things:
Yes, no, even the intrigue in maybe.
Silence contains the infinite.
All possible answers in all possible times.
From it, through God, any answer may spring.
Or the silence may remain
because there is no answer.
Now I hear God in the unknown edges of things,
in uncertainty, in hmmms and ahhhs.
In the quiet break in cicadas buzzing,
in the watching of my sleeping daughter,
in the response to my prayers.
The noise I sought,
noise of all kinds,
is a distraction—
a step further from God
and His timeless answer.