Brent Shepherd’s Reviews > The Silence of God > Status Update

A hand is stretched over the clouds, and it is this, and this alone, which assigns to cloud and air and wind their path and course. All things, therefore, will turn out for good. For the hand which is here at work is the same hand which for us allowed itself to be pierced and nailed to the cross… They know no more than others what will come. But they know do know who will come.

Yet although He has this kingly severity and superiority, He has the kindness to let her weep. Jesus is the one place in the world where we need not restrain our sorrows because He already knows them all.

May the sorrowful among us, who have come to that frontier and sit in such depths, realize that Jesus wills to bless and sanctify these bitter hours, indeed to make them creative.

Those who have a hungry heart and broken spirit are the favorites of God.

It is not her great faith that has triumphed. She has triumphed because she has taken the Savior at His word. She has caused the heart of God to prevail against the silence of God.

It is this a new relationship to the future. This is no longer a mist-covered landscape into which I peer anxiously because of the sinister events which will there befall me. Everything is now different. We do not know what will come. But we know who will come. And if the last hour belongs to us, we do not need to fear the next minute.

The Easter faith, then, is not just an upward glance to satisfy my curiosity about the mysterious hereafter. It is a summons of the Prince of Life to the present hour of life: “Be reconciled to God…

And if I am at my wits’ end when the hostile power of conscience attacks and accuses me, if I am oppressed by sickness and misfortune, if I am forsaken by men, if I can no longer see the divine hand or higher thoughts, then I may confidently repeat what the dying Savior dared to cry in his last agony, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And as I say this, the everlasting hands are there...

We must go to the place where it meets the bottom and comes in into the most secret and trouble the recesses of our lives. Precisely there God will meet us. Precisely there the sun waits for us we cannot sing solo that God is not lower, for the descent of the child did not reach it point on Christmas night. It was perhaps reached when the Crucified cried out..

A hand is stretched over the clouds, and it is this, and this alone, which assigns to cloud and air and wind their path and course. All things, therefore, will turn out for good. For the hand, which is here at work is the same hand, which for us allowed itself to be pierced and nailed to the cross; it is the same hand rested and blessing on the head of the children which healed tortured bodies…

May the sorrowful among us, who have come to that frontier and sit in such depths, realize that Jesus wills to bless and sanctify these bitter hours, indeed, to make them creative! May they see that they are not in a prison of the body from which there is no escape, but in a house to which Jesus comes! They have only to look up and to be ready to let Him sanctify their tears.