The Defiant Hope of Silence

We are still in the feast.

While the rest of the culture has dragged the tree to the curb and returned the unwanted sweaters, we know that the Twelve Days are not a countdown to Christmas, but a lingering within it. We are still in Christmastide. The light has come, but it has not yet fully dispensed the shadows. We are moving toward Epiphany, toward the revelation, but we are not there yet.

And yet, I feel it. You likely feel it, too. The phantom pressure of January 1st.

It hovers at the edge of our awareness like a taskmaster checking a watch. The calendar turns, and suddenly the cultural liturgy shifts from "Joy to the World" to "Improve Yourself." The emails shift from holiday greetings to strategic planning initiatives. The world demands we snap out of the mystery of Incarnation and wake up to the machinery of production. We are told to set goals, to join gyms, to optimize our workflows, and to ensure that this next lap around the sun is faster, stronger, and more efficient than the last.

It is a jarring dissonance. We are trying to hold the mystery of the Manger in one hand and the metric of the Quarterly Review in the other.

This is why, at Fermata, we view January differently. We do not view it as a launching pad. We view it as a threshold. And thresholds require a different kind of attention. If we rush through them, we trip. If we ignore them, we bring the dust of the old room into the sanctity of the new one.

We need a place to stand while the year turns. We need a posture that is not reactive, but receptive.

The Soul of Psalm 62

To find this posture, I have been sitting with Psalm 62 (we are meditating on this with our church for the month of January).

It is a text often quoted on coffee mugs and serene landscape calendars, usually Verse 1: "Truly my soul finds rest in God." But when you read the Psalm in its entirety, you realize this is not a poem written from a spa retreat. It is a poem written from a vice.

David is under duress. He speaks of being "assaulted." He describes lies and curses. He is surrounded by people who bless him with their mouths but curse him in their hearts... a sensation familiar to anyone who has navigated the politics of ministry or organizational leadership. The pressure is external, but it is also internal.

In the midst of this, David chooses a word that defines his January, and perhaps should define ours.

Dumiyah. It is the Hebrew word often translated as "rest" or "silence." But it is a heavy silence. It is not the silence of an empty room; it is the silence of a held breath. It is the silence of a soldier waiting for a command. It is the cessation of movement in order to ensure that the next move is the right one.

"For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation."

Notice the direction of the gaze. David does not look at the calendar. He does not look at his enemies. He does not even look at his own resources. He looks at God, and he stops moving.

This is counterintuitive to our survival instincts. When we feel the pressure of a New Year (the pressure to fix our churches, to heal our families, to secure our funding), our instinct is to hustle. We want to shore up the defenses. We want to write the new mission statement. We want to make noise to prove we are still relevant and productive.

But the spiritual direction of Psalm 62 is to stop. To cease. To let the silence do the heavy lifting.

The Tottering Fence

Why is this silence so difficult? Why do we prefer the noise of "resolutions" to the quiet of reflection?

I believe it is because silence exposes the structural integrity of our souls, and honestly, we are afraid of what we might find.

David uses a haunting image in Verse 3. He asks, "How long will you attack a man to crush him, all of you, like a leaning wall, a tottering fence?"

He is speaking of his enemies’ perception of him, but the image resonates deeper. How many of us enter this January feeling like a leaning wall? From the outside, the paint is fresh. The structure looks tall. We are the leaders, the pastors, the directors. We are the ones people come to for stability.

But we know the truth. We know about the rot in the post. We know that the ground beneath us has shifted. We know that if the wind blows from a certain direction, the whole thing might come down.

The "New Year" energy of our culture tells us to patch the fence. Add a new coat of paint. Prop it up with a new program. Fake it for another twelve months.

God invites us to something more terrifying and more redemptive. He invites us to admit the lean.

In the silence of January, we are allowed to acknowledge our fragility. We are allowed to look at the cracks. Because only when we stop pretending to be a fortress can we finally run to the true Fortress.

"He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken."

If I am the fortress, I will be shaken. If He is the fortress, I can be the leaning wall, and I will still be safe. This is the freedom of the gospel for the weary leader. You do not have to be the Rock. You just have to stand on it.

Liquid Honesty

Once we are standing on the Rock, we can stop posturing and start pouring.

Verse 8 is the pivot point of the Psalm, and it is the prompt for our reflection this month: "Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us."

The Hebrew imagery here is visceral. To "pour out" (shaphak) is to empty completely. It is to tip the vessel until the last drop drips out. It implies a liquidity to our inner life.

Too often, our prayers are solid. They are structured bricks of theology. They are polite requests. They are sanitized for divine consumption. We tell God what we think He wants to hear. We edit our anger. We mitigate our disappointment. We frame our burnout as "tiredness" and our doubt as "struggle."

But you cannot pour a brick.

To pour out your heart, you must allow your inner state to become fluid. You must let the grief flow. You must let the anger flow. You must let the deep, terrifying hope flow.

This January, before you set a goal, pour out your heart.

Pour out the disappointment of the last year. The ministry initiative that failed. The relationship that drifted. The silence of God in the moments you needed Him most.Pour out the fear of the coming year. The financial uncertainty. The political anxiety. The question of whether you have enough oil in your lamp to keep the light burning.

God is a refuge. A refuge is not a courtroom. It is not a place where evidence is weighed. It is a place where you are safe to be exactly as broken as you are. If we do not pour these things out before God, they do not disappear. They calcify. They become the hard stones of bitterness and cynicism that weigh us down and make us lean even further.

Voices in the Dark

This work of pouring out and waiting in silence is personal, but it is not solitary. We are not the first to wait in the dark.

We often speak of darkness as something to be banished, and eventually, it will be. But in the economy of God, the darkness is often where the work happens. The seed germinates in the dark. The womb shapes the life in the dark. The tomb held the Resurrection in the dark.

There is a "holy dark" that we must learn to navigate.

To help us in this, I have invited a collective of guest writers to join us throughout January. These are men and women who are not writing from the safety of a finished story. They are writing from the middle. They are writing from the integration of the Psalms into their own fractured and beautiful lives.

They will be sharing stories of hope, but not the cheap hope of a greeting card. They will share the rugged hope that is found when the lights go out. These are stories from friends and will be grounded in the Psalms.

I am inviting you to listen to them.

We need the stories of others to locate our own position. Sometimes, when our own prayers feel dry and our own silence feels empty, the faith of a brother or sister can act as a kind of spiritual echolocation. Their voice bounces off the canyon walls and tells us: You are not alone. The Rock is here. Keep walking.

Power and Love: The Final Integration

As we stand on this threshold between the lingering joy of Christmas and the looming demands of the year, Psalm 62 leaves us with a theological anchor that can weather any storm.

"Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God, and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love."

Power and Love.

In our world, these two are almost always divorced. Power is usually exercised without love—it becomes coercion, abuse, and exploitation. We see this in the news; we see this, tragically, in the church. Power without love crushes the leaning wall.

Conversely, love is often seen as devoid of power... it is seen as soft, sentimental, a nice emotion that cannot actually change the material facts of our suffering. Love without power weeps for the leaning wall but cannot stabilize it.

But the integration that anchors our soul is this: The Being with all the Power is the same Being with all the Love.

Because He has power, He can hold you.Because He has steadfast love (hesed), He wants to hold you.

This is the integration we need for January. We do not need more willpower. We do not need more clever strategies. We need to know that the hands that spun the galaxies are the same hands that were nailed to the wood, and those hands are cupped beneath us right now.

The Invite

So, here is the invitation.

Do not rush to sweep up the pine needles. Do not rush to fill the silence with noise. Let the holidays linger. Let the calendar turn without your permission.

Instead, find a quiet chair. Open your hands. And ask yourself:

• What is the silence trying to tell me?

• Where am I acting like a fortress when I am actually a leaning wall?

• What have I been holding back that I need to pour out?

• What is God inviting me into, not to do, but to be?

  
  

The table is set. The Rock is steady. The darkness is not an enemy; it is the place where the Light is born.