Lynn Jones: The Silence of Love
By Lynn Jones
The light appears to have no color. But when you bend the light, you see that it is made up of all the colors of a rainbow. Love is like that. In his great chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13, Paul breaks love down into some of its distinctive qualities.
Paul said, “Love bears all things” (1 Cor. 13:7). Another translates that phrase, “Love knows how to be silent.”
This is an interesting translation. Halford Luccock pointed out that we generally think of love in terms of activism. Love knows how to help a friend. Love knows how to speak a word of encouragement and comfort. But, “Love knows how to be silent?”
The truth of the matter is that love does know how to be silent. Some situations cry for silence. That runs counter to the nature of most of us. We feel that we must fix things. We must say something to solve the problem.
The silence of love is not indifference. It is not merely a lack of something to say. It is a way of communicating. Just as silence is needed to hear a watch ticking, so silence is needed to hear a heart beating.
There is the silence of love when someone makes a mistake. Our tendency is to let loose a barrage of criticism and advice. We often play the part of a district attorney. We are full of charges and indictments.
Great griefs demand silence. Words are a noisy sacrilege. When Job had experienced his awful losses, three friends came to see him. “They sat down upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spoke a word to him; for they saw that his grief was very great” (Job 2:13). It was the most effective ministry they had. After they began speaking, they brought more hurt than help.
Worship demands silence. We live in a noisy, chattering age. In worship, God invites us, “Be still and know that I am God.”
Parenthood demands silence. Every parent knows the agony of silence while a child is making a decision. Everything within us cries out to make the decision for the child, but love refuses to let us do it. We often must allow our children the great but glorious risk of growth. It is the way our heavenly Father most often relates to us.
Loving trust demands silence. Suspicion is always demanding explanations. It can never rest until everything has been explained. Trust asks no hesitant questions even when baffled.
The writer of Ecclesiastes said, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. . . a time to keep silence, and a time to speak” (Ecc. 3:1, 7). Love is sensitive to that timing. “Love knows how to be silent” (1 Cor. 13:7). Some of our most powerful messages are communicated by loving silences.
Lynn Jones is a retired pastor who lives in Oxford. He does supply preaching for churches in his area and often serves as an interim pastor. Jones is also an author, has written two books and writes a weekly newspaper column. He may be contacted at: kljones45@yahoo.com.
