On Thursday evening, I turned my laptop over to a team of “experts” in my office, so they could convert my PC from Windows XP to Windows 7. To all you Apple IOS users out there, please hang in there. I think you’ll get my thinking.
My laptop was with the conversion team all day Friday. Besides minimal access on my mobile devices, I was mostly in the dark related to office e-mails and applications. I used this time to meet with several of my team members to discuss their performance over the past year. I also dealt with some other phone calls and conversations, and I cleaned up some waiting paper work. The time was not a waste at all, but it did seem a bit strange to be untied from the network.
As I was handing over my laptop to the conversion team, I remarked how I felt like NASA during the Apollo 13 re-entry. In the clip shown below, the Apollo 13 re-entry pod was making its way back into the earth’s atmosphere after a challenging flight with multiple problems. Many wondered if the astronauts would make it back alive. If you remember the story, the re-entry pod lost contact with NASA for an extended period of time as they made their way from outer space into the atmosphere. For everyone involved these minutes of silence must have seemed like an eternity.
Sometimes we go through times like this. We feel like God is quiet in our lives. We don’t hear His voice. We feel a lack of direction. We’re scared and lonely. And we begin to lose hope. It’s times like this we need some reminders.
5 Ways to Handle Darkness, Silence, and Uncertainty in Our Lives
- Prayer. I’m not sure if this is the starting point, but it’s definitely one place to go when you feel like you’re in the dark. As God for direction. Ask Him to relieve your anxiety and fear. Ask God for hope. And ask Him to speak clearly to you.
- Listen. I’m not an expert, but I think we crowd our brains with too much noise. We’re plugged into the web 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When we’re in the car, we have noise blaring through the speakers. We need to carve time out of the chaos of life to be still and listen.
- Trust. Sometimes this is the hardest part. We want to be in control. We want to know exactly what is going on all the time. Faith is hoping for things unseen. “Let go and let God” may sound a little too basic, but there is some truth to this. We need to trust that God will work all things together for good.
- Remember. When you finally find direction, remember who is leading you. We are often quick to pump up our chests and rest on our own laurels. “Look what I did!” We need to stop and recall how God is working in our lives.
- Celebrate. Just like the NASA engineers celebrated when the Apollo 13 re-entry pod showed up on their monitors, we need to rejoice in the blessings of God coming through for us.
On Friday evening, I picked up my laptop from the conversion team. They explained to me what had happened with my machine. There was some type of restore error which caused a delay in the conversion process. They stuck with it and figured out how to overcome the problem. My laptop is now working fine with the new operating system. The time of “darkness” was actually refreshing. I feel like I was able to make some connections which could have been overlooked otherwise.
Maybe – just maybe, God uses times of darkness, silence, and uncertainty in our lives to shine even brighter.
When have you experienced a time of silence or darkness in your life? How did you get through this time? What advice do you have for others who might be going through a time when God’s voice seems absent?
As I finished typing up this post, I couldn’t help but have this song in my head by Hillsong United. If you have a few minutes, watch this video and listen to the words. I think it provides a great reminder to all of us who sometimes feel like we’re unsure of what is going on around us.
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