The Proving Ground

"Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made." (Genesis 3:1)

Was that not the test in the garden? Not the fruit. The silence. Adam and Eve stand among everything they have been given, and God is not there arguing his case. He has already spoken. He said what he said, and then he stopped, and into that quiet the serpent came, and the serpent's whole strategy was to reinterpret a silence. Did God really say. Is God really good. Is he holding something back from you.

And God was not absent. He was present, and silent, and watching. Picture it, and admit you are picturing, but picture it: God watching them stand at that tree with the whole world already given to them, saying with his whole heart, love me, do not choose this, do not choose to stop trusting me, I have given you everything you ever needed. And his heart breaking as the hand went out.

He has spent every day from that one to this one reminding us that he loves us still. But the shape of the test has not changed. It still comes in the quiet. When God has spoken and then gone silent, a voice arrives to reinterpret the silence, to whisper that quiet must mean he is not good, or not near, or holding out on you.

So understand what the silence is. It is not the absence of God. It is the proving ground of your reliance, the place where it is decided whether you will trust what he has already said, or believe the voice that always shows up the moment he stops speaking.