Every Reaction There Painted

Someone told me recently that the silence of God- that yawning abyss of no "conversation" or "words"- is not a negative thing, as we so often think it to be. Instead, it is a personal, intimate existence and experience.

That struck me as particularly beautiful...

But it's hard to capture the sentiment, the meaning behind it, with mere words. (I guess that's fitting, heh.) But I'm going to try and draw you a rough, charcoal sketch of what I think it means.

I liken it to sitting in an open field with a friend, darkness blanketing the scene, watching a mesmerizing meteor shower tracing across the November night sky. The air is crisp and clean, there are no clouds to shroud your view, and the upper atmosphere is striated with lines of trailed aurora. You don't want the person laying next to you to try and have a conversation with you right then, at that moment- it would absolutely spoil the experience. Just because there aren't any words being said doesn't mean that you are alone, though. You're both there, sitting on the browned, autumn grass with eyes fixed high above the horizon. You're experiencing it, experiencing that impressive and grand glimpse in time, together. And that very fact brings you closer to the person you're with, as it establishes an esoteric sense of intimacy, a feeling that transcends any measure of words you could possibly conjure or devise.

And how much more rude and thoughtless would it be if you tried to talk with your friend when He was actually the one who arranged the very sight that you're tarnishing with your attempts at petty conversation?

However, the very process of a human being living- of our lungs breathing air, of the rhythmic beating of our hearts, of the amorphous and ephemeral thoughts pacing back and forth within the physical confines of our minds- is no less complex or mysterious or marvelous than a meteor shower on a cool, clear night. I would even say it's more so. Just in a way that is harder for us, as terminally human and limited beings, to acknowledge and understand.

It's ironic that the reality of that is too big for us to grasp, yet we take such stock in something like a meteor shower, for being as "big" as it is. We, as humans, cannot even comprehend all of this. It's so difficult (maybe impossible) for the finite to imagine the infinite, for the human to vie for the divine.

So maybe we could be content (no, happy) to just watch the night sky with Him, and pass the time in appreciation of the wonders before us, of the elaborate and intricate masterpiece that He is orchestrating.

In those moments, I like to think that God is smiling, the corners of his lips turned up softly as He watches. But He isn't watching the sky- He already knows what He has done, what He is doing, and what He will continue to do.

His eyes are instead fastened upon our faces, soaking in every reaction there painted.