"It’s enough to drive a man crazy;
it’ll break a man’s faith
It’s enough to make him
wonder if he’s ever been sane
When he’s bleating for comfort
from Thy staff and Thy rod
And the heaven’s only answer
is the silence of God

It’ll shake a man’s timbers
when he loses his heart
When he has to remember what broke him apart
This yoke may be easy, but this burden is not
When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of God"

The above are the opening lyrics in a song by Andrew Peterson.  Recently I purchased a couple of his albums on iTunes with the gift card my brother Kirk gave me for Christmas.  Toward the end of the song he says, “… the aching may remain, but the breaking does not, in the holy lonesome echo of the silence of God.”

I seem to have given the answers before I asked the questions.  This post is an observation on brokenness, as I have been mulling for days, maybe weeks on the topic.  Haiti is the poster-child for a world in pieces… lives snuffed out, children fatherless, sick and diseased people wandering in the streets.  They are all alone in the huge mobs.  Hurt, pain, and loss mar the landscape of the backwards country – everything that is wrong with this world.

When I turn my gaze homeward, the brokenness has a different mask but it is there.  It is there in the lives of my friends who have lost children.  It is there in my mother who has lost her mind to Alzheimer’s.  It is there in the hurting, wounded stack of friends at church.  It is there in the life of our foster son, who has lost his birth parents and now lives a state-run life.  It is there in the lives of my co-workers, who put all their trust in having a job, only to see the company leaders soak up all the glory and credit for themselves.  Empty, meaningless, vain.

There is love beyond measure, to be sure.  But singing songs to the hurting is like pouring vinegar on a wound… it doesn’t feel real good.  So when our cries go out and the sky remains quiet, and the small voice inside has closed for the evening, what IS the answer?  When God is silent, what are we to do?  What are we to think?

I don’t suppose I know the perfect answer there, but I do know one thing that at least gives me some measure of comfort.  It is that picture of Jesus, alone in the garden, crying out, waiting for an answer… yet willing to do the Father’s will.  Weeping, alone, in the dark, in the silence.  The Savior knows what it is like.