Silence and Speaking

There is a time for everything... "a time to be silent and a time to speak" (Ecclesiastes 3:7).

It was in the midst of the weekly pastor's prayer meeting, after we had solved all of the world's and the church's problems, when we began to share prayer requests. My turn came, and I shared about a conflict that had happened just two days prior during Sunday School between two parishioners. They had apparently gotten into a verbal sparring match, with one declaring, "I'm not coming back into this church!" The other had come to me to tell me about it, because that's just what you want to hear before you preach.

So I shared this incident with my colleagues, and asked for prayer for both men. "Have you talked with the one who left?" I was asked. "Have you smoothed things out?" I paused, because I had been wrestling with just that issue. My tendency is to speak up, to fix things (or at least try), to verbally insert myself into such matters. But I had been sensing a strong direction from the Lord to "stay out of it." Actually, I think God may have even said to me what we always tell our children not to say: "Shut up. For once, just be quiet."

To my clergy colleagues that day, I said something like, "I don't think I'm supposed to fix it. Jesus says that the ones who are involved should seek each other out, work on forgiveness. I'm just not sure my input would be all that helpful." And there was, oddly enough, silence for a bit until another colleague said to me, "Help us on this. I think we could all learn a lesson here."

I don't think I had any great wisdom that day. Miraculously, I received from God the common sense to not speak up in that case. And it was a long week, but by the next Sunday, the one who said he would never be back was, in fact, back, and things got better between the two offended parties. I've always wondered how much damage I would have done had I rushed in to "fix" it.

Well, I know a bit because too many other times (before and since) I have rushed in. I have tried to fix things that needed time to heal on their own. Most of us (big secret reveal here) who go into ministry are fixers. We really do trust Jesus to do the healing, of our lives and of the world, but most of us would like to help Jesus along, to convince him to move just a little more quickly than he seems to be moving. We should heed the words of The Teacher and learn that there are times when we should speak, but there are other times (probably more of them) when we should keep silent.

Because only in the silence can we truly hear God speak: "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10).