Anticipation

Our daughter lives in a place that’s expecting snow all day tomorrow. I fondly remember days when I had great anticipation of a pending snowstorm, or really any amount of accumulation. I admit that I still love the expectancy of snow; the more the better. Maybe it’s the memory of romping in it and the possibility of reveling in it still. Maybe it’s the simple beauty; the stillness and silence. Maybe it’s because I will be enlivened to “be” and not “do”.

I am struck by the look of anticipation on the faces of the two disciples rushing to the sepulcher the morning of the resurrection. They must be full of memories of their time with Jesus. Memories that permeated every moment of their lives and linger still. Although this dear, close friend of theirs is no longer with them physically, he emits a silent presence that lingers into the night.

Why are we so petrified by silence? Presumably because we think nothing happens in silence. Silence is void, emptiness, blank space. But music’s metrical waves extend even through silence. We can sense them even when there is no music…These silences sound charged because of the memory of what has been and the anticipation of what will be, so we are pulled in and held in. Even in the most numbing of silences, when God’s absence seems most deadening, the raising of the crucified Jesus from the dead sends a wave arcing through the silence to resurrection day, and by the Spirit we can catch it and sense it – and the silence can live. ~Jeremy Begbie