When God Is Silent Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes when we say "God is silent," what's really going on is that he hasn't told the story the way we wanted it told. He will be silent when we want him to fill in the blanks of the story we are creating. But with his own stories, the ones we live in, he is seldom silent. — Paul E. Miller

With my veil I put my faith on display - rather than my beauty. My value as a human is defined by my relationship with God, not by my looks. I cover the irrelevant. And when you look at me, you don't see a body. You view me only for what I am: a servant of my Creator.
You see, as a Muslim woman, I've been liberated from a silent kind of bondage. I don't answer to the slaves of God on earth. I answer to their King. — Yasmin Mogahed

Though there are times when it may seem like God is silent, he is never absent. — Brian Houston

I was shaking when I asked my mother, "Do you think you eat enough?" She was silent for a long time until she said quietly, "That is between me and God. — Eula Biss

I feel his intense gaze skimming my face and force myself to look him in the eye. This time, when he leans closer, I know what he wants. He traces my jaw with his fingertips, then moves lower to my chin. My eyelids flutter closed when he tips my face up.
Oh my God. Sam Donavon is going to kiss me.
The forest holds its breath.
I hold my breath.
Our lips brush, light as eyelashes. His fingers trail back into my hair, tilting my head. Hot cinnamon dances across my mouth.
I'm drowning.
And then my name, roared at the top of familiar lungs, cracks the silent night. — Kate Avelynn

God is often silent when we prefer that he speak and he interrupts us when we prefer that he stay silent. His ways are not our ways. To live with the sacred God of creation means that we conduct our lives with a God who does not explain himself to us. It means that we worship a God who is often mysterious - too mysterious to fit our formulas for better living. It means that God is not our best friend our secret lover or our good-luck charm. He is God. — Craig S. Barnes

To be silent when we are impelled to utter words injurious to God or to our neighbour, is an act of virtue; but, to be silent in confessing our sins, is the ruin of the soul. — Alphonsus Liguori

Dhyan means meditation. Meditation means awareness, watchfulness, a silent witnessing of all the processes of the mind. And the magic of watching is that as your watchfulness deepens, the mind starts evaporating. When the watchfulness is absolute mind becomes nil, a zero. And the disappearance of the mind gives you clarity, absolute clarity, transparency; you can see through and through, you become a mirror. And then life is reflected as it is - not according to any doctrine, not according to the Bible or the Koran or the Gita but as it is. And to know life as it is, is to know god. — Rajneesh

Whoever has received knowledge
and eloquence in speech from God
should not be silent or secretive
but demonstrate it willingly.
When a great good is widely heard of,
then, and only then, does it bloom,
and when that good is praised by man,
it has spread its blossoms. — Marie De France

When the angel spoke, God awoke in the heart of this girl of Nazareth and moved within her like a giant. He stirred and opened His eyes and her soul and saw that in containing Him she contained the world besides. The Annunciation was not so much a vision as an earthquake in which God moved the universe and unsettled the spheres, and the beginning and end of all things came before her in her deepest heart. And far beneath the movement of this silent cataclysm she slept in the infinite tranquility of God, and God was a child curled up who slept in her and her veins were flooded with His wisdom which is night, which is starlight, which is silence. And her whole being was embraced in Him whom she embraced and they became tremendous silence." -Thomas Merton — Thomas Merton

The instructor is always silent when the test is given ... When God is silent in your life ... You are being tested. — Rick Warren

In the moment when you make the least petition to God, though it be but a silent wish that he may approve you, or add one moment to your life,
do you not, in the very act, necessarily exclude all other beings from your thought? In that act, the soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no more present to your mind than your brother or your child. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don't say God is silent when your Bible is closed. Open it and read it. God will speak. — Adam Cappa

You may be going through a season in your Christian experience when it seems as if God is silent. You may sense the sweetness of His presence, but He doesn't appear to be saying much of anything. More often than not we interpret this to mean that He's somehow upset with us. We think it's a sign of disapproval or separation. But I believe there are times when even our Bridegroom God steps back and simply admires us. Overcome with emotions for His bride, He is moved beyond words. This may stretch our imaginations, but this is how deeply He cares for us. — S.J. Hill

Walking uplifts the spirit. Breathe out the poisons of tension, stress, and worry; breathe in the power of God. Send forth little silent prayers of goodwill toward those you meet. Walk with a sense of being a part of a vast universe. Consider the thousands of miles of earth beneath your feet; think of the limitless expanse of space above your head. Walk in awe, wonder, and humility. Walk at all times of day. In the early morning when the world is just waking up. Late at night under the stars. Along a busy city street at noontime. — Bill Vaughan

A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent — John Calvin

When God is silent, we need to know Him deeper than we had known Him before — Sunday Adelaja

(I) "My soul spoke to me in a whisper, urgently and alarmingly: 'Words, words, do not make too many words. Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness, and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are all completely mired in madness?'"
(2) Jung's soul: "There are hellish webs of words, only words ... Be tentative with words, value them ... for you are the first who gets snared in them. For words have meanings. With words you pull up the underworld. Word, the paltriest and mightiest. In words the emptiness and the fullness flow together. Hence the word is an image of the God."
(3) "But if the word is a symbol, it means everything. When the way enters death and we are surrounded by rot and horror, the way rises in the darkness and leaves the mouth as the saving symbol, the word. — C. G. Jung

God remains hidden and silent unless you participate. Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not. We are all the co-creators of reality with God. God moves only when there is intention or prayer. He walks toward us when we take the very first step. Faith is the prime step. — Samreen Ahsan

God's guiding hand, the guiding Voice, resting lightly upon us is best felt and heard when we are silent and still. — Brenda Shoshanna

God remains silent so that men and women may speak, protest, and struggle. God remains silent so that people may really become people. When God is silent and men and women cry, God cries in solidarity with them but doesn't intervene. God waits for the shouts of protest. — Elsa Tamez

Sometimes when we're suffering we feel as if we have been singled out. We wonder why God has picked on us. But my life as the rabbi of a small synagogue taught me that if that's what we think, we are mistaken. We are never alone in our suffering. Scratch the surface of any family, any social gathering, any congregation, and you will find loss and pain there. We may not always be privy to the pain, but it is there just the same. If we had the power to peer inside the heart of any human being, we would uncover there a silent anguish. — Naomi Levy

The rhythm built up, high resonant notes from the buzzing xylophone, the off-scale dipping warble of the flute, the eerie, strangely primeval bass of the synthesizer.
The others punctuated the music with claps and sudden piercing shrieks from behind their veils. Suddenly one began to sing in Tamashek.
"He sings about his synthesizer," Gresham murmured.
"What does he say?"
I humbly adore the acts of the Most High,
Who has given to the synthesizer what is better than a soul.
So that, when it plays, the men are silent,
And their hands cover their veils to hide their emotions.
The troubles of life were pushing me into the tomb,
But thanks to the synthesizer,
God has given me back my life. — Bruce Sterling

God's favorites, especially God's favorites, are not immune from the bewildering times when God seems silent. Where there is no longer any opportunity for doubt, there is no longer any opportunity for faith either. Faith demands uncertainty, confusion. The Bible includes many proofs of God's concern - some quite spectacular - but no guarantess. A guarantee would, after all, preclude faith. — Paul Tournier

I believe in the sun ... even if it isn't shining. I believe in Love ... even when I am alone and I will always believe in God Almighty ... even when He is silent! — Timothy Pina

Kellum reminded the jury that special prosecutor Robert Smith, "a gentleman I don't know," would have the final argument, and that this was a powerful advantage. He then closed with a dramatic message that the jury's verdict would have eternal consequences. I want you to think of the future. When your summons comes to cross the Great Divide, and, as you enter your father's house - a home not made by hands but eternal in the heavens, you can look back to where your father's feet have trod and see your good record written in the sands of time and, when you go down to your lonely silent tomb to a sleep that knows no dreams, I want you to hold in the palm of your hand a record of service to God and your fellow man. And the only way you can do that is to turn these boys loose.123 — Devery S. Anderson

But why will God not speak to me? ... I think when God is silent, He wants us to prove in our hearts that we are willing to follow Him no matter the cost. If all answers were crystal-clear, how could we show our devotion to Him? — Jennifer Beckstrand

Dying is all about letting go and letting be, as is the awareness of God. People who have traveled far along the contemplative path are often aware that the sense of separation from God is itself pasted up out of a mass of thoughts and feelings. When the mind comes into its own stillness and enters the silent land, the sense of separation goes. Union is seen to be the fundamental reality and separateness a highly filtered mental perception. — Martin Laird

Even such is Time *
Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days:
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.
Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618)
*These lines are said to have been composed by Sir Walter Raleigh on the night before his execution. — Walter Raleigh

I keep thinking it's going to come back when I least expect it. When I'm at my happiest. So I'm always afraid to be happy."
Zane looks out at the horizon. "You know, there are so many things that can go wrong in this world, you could spend your whole life worrying about them and forget to appreciate every moment you have with someone. Then, you're like, 'God, why wasn't I thankful for what I had when I had it?'" He glances over at me. "You know what the secret to a happy life is?" I shake my head, silent tears falling down my cheeks.
He squeezes my hand. "No regrets. Just live in the moment. — Nicole Christie

When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you. It tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real and blazes transparently with the Reality of God. — Thomas Merton

Prayer is the Word of God which comes to you when you are silent enough, still enough and expectant to receive it. — Joel S. Goldsmith

Those who are inconstant and uninstructed should not argue with intelligent men. An intelligent man is one who conforms to God and mostly keeps silent; when he speaks he says very little, and only what is necessary and acceptable to God. — Nikodimos

When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand. — C.S. Lewis

When your heart is broken, don't go silent - speak to God in his own language ... — John Geddes

How do I talk to the flower?
Through it I walk to the Infinite.
And what is the infinite?
It is that silent, small force.
It isn't the outer physical contact. No, it isn't that.
The infinite is not confirmed in the visible world.
It is not in the earthquake, the wind or the fire.
It is that still small voice that calls up the fairies.
Yet when you look out upon God's beautiful world- there it is.
When you look onto the heart of a rose there you experience it- but you can't explain it.

There are certain things, often very little things, like the peanut, the little piece of clay, the little flower that cause you to look within-
and then you see the soul of things. — George Washington Carver

We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. — Charlotte Bronte

There is a terrible divine necessity about redemptive suffering. God is doing something so ultimately wonderful that unanswered prayer is the necessary price of achieving it, and Job begins to experience this. His prayers will be answered, but only when his sufferings have achieved that for which God purposes them. In a deeper way it was the same for Jesus Christ. In a similar way it is yet the same for Christian people today; when God remains silent in answer to our urgent cries, it is not that he does not hear, but rather that it is somehow necessary for us to cry in vain and wait in hope until he achieves in us, and in his world, what he wills to achieve. — Christopher Ash

When your consciousness becomes a still mirror, a still lake, a silent reservoir of energy, God is reflected in it. — Rajneesh

When I think of God's Kingdom, I am compelled to be silent because of its immensity, because God's Kingdom is none other than God himself with all His riches. — Meister Eckhart

The angels in heaven covered their eyes with their hands and sobbed loudly, because that is what they always do when a man hits his wife. A profound sadness settled over the earth ... God was silent in every language. The angels tried to dry their tears, but their handkerchiefs were so soaked through that is started raining even in the deserts. — Guus Kuijer

So this book is a sidewalk strewn with junk, trash which I throw over my shoulders as I travel in time back to November eleventh, nineteen hundred and twenty-two.
I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon
millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind. — Kurt Vonnegut

Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.
Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self.
You are the way and the wayfarers.
And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. — Kahlil Gibran

What is such a believer, whose very life depends upon the daily bread of the living Word of God, supposed to do when God is silent? — Mike Mason

Frederick Faber: In the spiritual life God chooses to try our patience first of all by His slowness. He is slow: we are swift and precipitate. It is because we are but for a time, and He has been for eternity ... There is something greatly overawing in the extreme slowness of God. Let it overshadow our souls, but let it not disquiet them. We must wait for God, long, meekly, in the wind and wet, in the thunder and the lightning, in the cold and the dark. Wait, and He will come. He never comes to those who do not wait. He does not go their road. When He comes, go with Him, but go slowly, fall a little behind; when he quickens His pace, be sure of it, before you quicken yours. But when He slackens, slacken at once: and do not be slow only, but silent, very silent, for He is God. — John Ortberg