I am sure that like many of you, Robbi and I are recovering from a busy Thanksgiving weekend.  We just returned home from Ohio last night after spending three days with ALL of our kids and grandkids at Grandma’s house. We worked hard to help out gram with some fall cleaning and preparation for the winter ahead.  Everyone was involved, grandchildren included, and we actually had a great time working together.  Jason and Meghann and our 4 grandchildren Madison, James, Sienna and Evelyn drove in from Virginia; Lauren and Wes and Greyson, Kirsten, Megan and her boyfriend Jarrod drove in from Michigan; Ashton, Steven and Olivia drove in from NYC; Grandma and aunt Edith were waiting on all of us.  I mention all of them because I am obviously proud of all of them and I love them all, but in the same way that all of them drove in, we had to say good-bye to them as they all left yesterday morning.  The excitement and anticipation of seeing all of them was followed by the heartache of saying goodbye again.  Why can’t it always be this way?  Why can we not always be together?  Natural questions filled with the matching emotions that accompany them.  We were so thankful for this time, but why did it have to end?

As I made the 6-1/2 hour drive home yesterday Robbi worked on school papers preparing for the next three weeks and I just spent time thinking and praying for each of our kids as they made the drive home in all directions.  I do not ever take those trips and their safety for granted, because as I make my way down the highway I see crosses and flowers along the rode that tell me that someone did not make it home safely.  For a brief period of time, Robbi dosed off and the car was very, very quiet.  Just the day before there was all kinds of activity with everyone working and babies crying and now our lives were once again quiet. Quiet can be nice, especially when those babies are keeping mom and dad up at night, but this kind of quiet is different.  I found myself thinking about the silence of inactivity.  I could not help but think of my mother-in-law and aunt who just experienced the Kamphuis invasion and now they sit silent in each of their homes.  Imagine the change!  Massive amounts of activity and noise suddenly revert to silence.

What can we learn from the silence?  What can we glean as we sit in silence?  I think there are obvious things that everyone of us can agree to.  It is good to rest.  We need to rest.  God knows that we need to rest so He set aside one day a week for us to do that.  If He did that, then it only follows that there must be some benefit to doing it, besides, He commands us to take that day to rest.  The absence of activity will also have a tendency to cause us to contemplate all that we have to be thankful for.  In the quietness of my drive home I was moved with thanksgiving for my children and grandchildren.  I was thankful for a healthy family that was able to do what we did.  I was thankful for the atmosphere of love that was obvious between all of our kids.  They genuinely like being with each other.  I was thankful for the opportunity for all of us to be together.  We may live hundreds of miles apart but due to FaceTime and telephones, these visits allow us to pick up with where we left off with our phone visits.  I thought about the goodness of God in giving me Robbi more than 40 years ago and how we now find ourselves back where we started, just the two of us.  Our lives have always revolved around our kids and now the honeymoon starts all over again with the adjustments of it being just the two of us. I also thought about how our kids are where we were 10, 20, 30 years ago and all that they will face in the days ahead.  I thought about my mother-in-law and aunt who are recovering from the invasion and find themselves alone, again.  And yet, they are not alone. We are never alone.  The same God who has been faithful in their younger years and in our younger years remains faithful today. He has a purpose for each of them even as they are alone.  As we grow older we have this tendency to think that we are more of a burden than a help and yet there is no greater thing that grandma and aunt Edith can do than to pray for all of us. Remembering what they had to go through as they grew up and at the same time realizing the challenges that all of us will face gives them a lot of prayer material.  Is grandma’s home silent?  Yep. What about aunt Edith’s? Yep.  Ours is pretty quiet too, but God has promised to be with us, always, even in the silence.  I came across this verse this morning:
“The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty One who will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by His love; He will exult over you with loud singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17)  He is with you, He saves, He rejoices, He quiets, He loves, He exults, and He sings loudly.  Does that sound like silence to you?  God is busy!  He loves us and we are NEVER alone! Psalm 145:18 says “The LORD is near to all who call on Him…”  In Matthew 28:20 Jesus tells us “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  You are never alone and you are never out of His line of sight and care. Even though it might seem silent, know that God has a purpose for that silence.  In Psalm 46:10 God tells us to “Be still, and know that I am God…” God gives us the silence of inactivity to be able to sit in silence and know that He is God and that He is with you.  Seek God in the silence and then rejoice in His faithfulness and goodness. Don’t ever forget that there will come a day when we will all be together with each other in the presence of God and it will be the ULTIMATE day of thanksgiving.  Embrace the silence of inactivity and look for the hand of God in it.