How to Find Your Way Through a Silent Midnight

A silent midnight—that’s what she’d call it when she was four and her voice was still small and high like Minnie Mouse. Something about it unraveled me. Maybe it’s because we know the silent seasons.

Times we’re wrestling for clarity with empty, clenched fists.

Waiting for a sign, a blessing, a coming-through, an I-got-you.

Wandering through fog like an uncertain blanket blurring everything.

Willing our worried selves back to sleep on a restless night.

Maybe it’s because it feels like the dead of night–the darkest hour–when we need God and He seems stoic and silent.

That might be right where you are today, feeling as alone as Mary in an overflowing city. What squeezes you is a bit different, perhaps, than amplifying contractions and the lack of accommodations–but it leaves that same unswallowable fear.

How do we find our way through a silent midnight to the peace pulsing through the lyrics of “Silent Night”?

Peace in the pressing and paltry.

Calm in the cramped and chaotic.

Warmth for the worn and not-welcomed.

All Along

Could it be that our sharpest ache and God’s silence walk in step? That the quiet isn’t absence or inattention but merely the middle of an unfolding story?

Before Jesus’s earthly birth, there were centuries of silence–a seemingly endless silent midnight. But God was still good, still coming.

He was writing a bigger, better, more beautiful story than we could have fathomed.

All along, He had this in mind:

There will be a new time, a fresh start.

Hope of all hopes, dream of our dreams,

    a child is born, sweet-breathed; a son is given to us: a living gift.

And even now, with tiny features and dewy hair, He is great.

    The power of leadership, and the weight of authority, will rest on His shoulders.

His name? His name we’ll know in many ways—

    He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Dear Father everlasting, ever-present never-failing,

    Master of Wholeness, Prince of Peace.

– Isaiah 9:6, The Voice

What gets me is the “Dear Father everlasting, ever-present never-failing.” He never left. Never gave up on His rescue plan. Never left us behind, alone, or in need.

In the silence, He was there.

In the black of midnight, He was “ever-present.”

In our own silent midnights, He is our dear and “never-failing” Father.

“Lord At Thy Birth”

The other part of this passage that wrecks me is that “even now . . . He is great.” Before Jesus grew up, before He spoke tenderly to thousands on mountainsides and multiplied bread to meet their physical hunger too, before He explained a single parable or healed a even one person, He was already great.

Let’s pause at the gravity of this: “Jesus, Lord at thy birth,” as the carol Silent Night goes.

Fully human–newborn at that–yet also undimmably God. As brilliant a light at birth as He is in full glory. Every name now that He will ever be.

What does that mean for you and me?

Only that “there is nothing in our present or future circumstances that can weaken his love. 39There is no power above us or beneath us—no power that could ever be found in the universe that can distance us from God’s passionate love, which is lavished upon us through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One!” (Romans 8:38b-39, The Passion Translation).

Only that God is with us in detours and through distress–God who is Fear Slayer is also Emmanual with us (Psalm 23:4).

Only that God cares and counsels, intervenes and redeems–in time.

The Way Through Silent Midnights

The way through a silent midnight is always to trust that God Who Sees Us sees more than we do. He sees straight through to the end of the story, even when He is silent in the present tense.

What I’m learning about grief-heavy seasons is that quiet can be a gift. Silence can be contentment in the presence of one we know so well words aren’t always necessary. When my heart is heavy, I just need to know that His hurts too. 

Sometimes silence simply means God’s grieving with us, for us, within us.

We can trust that He cares. Trust that He knows all of it. Trust that He carried every bit of it to the cross already.

Trust–that’s the lynchpin. 

Trust turns us towards God when silence settles in and darkness feels dense. It helps us feel our way towards the One who is and was and will forever be “Master of Wholeness, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). Even on the bleakest midnight.

Thank Before the Day Breaks

When the sky is the very darkest, the stars are the very clearest. I wonder if that’s how the shepherds saw them that night. Luminous. Large. As if something was about to happen.

I wonder if there was a stirring in their hearts before the angels appeared, or whether they were completely unaware.

What we do know is that at the herald of the angels, the shepherds harkened. The word “hark,” I discover, means “to pay close attention to” or “listen.” 

The shepherds listened with full attention to the angel’s tidings, then hurried towards the light. “‘Let’s go! Let’s hurry,’ they said, ‘and find this Word that is born in Bethlehem and see for ourselves what the Lord has revealed to us’” (Luke 2:15, TPT). Then, as Luke describes it, they ran.

They ran through the still-dark night towards the light. Ran with urgency and expectation. Ran breathless to the One who breathes light and life into every pitch-black hour.

I’ll bet the night was silent aside from heaving breath and the thump of running feet. I picture them tumbling into the stable without a knock, falling to their knees without a word. Because thanks, too, can be silent.

Maybe that’s how we begin to trust–we thank God before the day breaks. Thank Him for who He’s been all along. Thank Him for seeing the end of the story when we don’t have that perspective yet. 

Let’s pray.

Jesus, You are a gift always, but especially when life feels like a silent midnight. May we tuck in close when our hearts are tender and let You hold us through the silence. May we pay attention as the shepherds did and run through to night towards You, our Light.

Just a friend over here in your corner,

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