Dear daughter….
That sudden silence was painfully exquisite. Yes, a strange way to put it, right?
It was exquisite in the mastery of self-control it conferred on you, and painful in its weirdly excessive duration.
Yes, that word weird is likely to appear several times in this treatise. But I will explain as best as I can, and I hope you will understand. Fortunately, this is effortlessly under your complete control. You can trash it, take a break, read again, and hold your pro or con decision without having to deal with any other person or view. Just a few of the things I love about the written word.
Where on earth did you learn that art of going silent in the face of a heated debate? Certainly not from me. I rarely zip it until I have had my say.
Wow! The end of your silence was a bit weird though. If you ask me, it turned what would have been golden turned to bronze… still an award winning performance I guess. But I know you. Summa cum laude or nothing else for you. Another difference between us two.
It turned to bronze, first because of its suddenness at the beginning, and finally because of the subsequent unnecessarily long duration. You should have seen the confused expression on my face when it started… and my amazed but amused face after I went silent too, waiting to see if and when you would break it. And break it you did. Come to think of it, perhaps I’ll give you a summa cum laude for that! It was pretty smooth! That should make you happy!
But my dear, I feel I owe you an explanation for my passionate reaction. You see, I put great stock on that subject. And I guess I had assumed everyone of like faith felt the same way. I therefore panicked a bit to discover that you had issues with it. I mean, how could you not agree with such a basic part of knowing God? I felt we simply had to reach an understanding on it. And I am still not sure we did although I am hoping that communication was the problem and not the fact of it.
But then again, I suspect that deep-rooted resentment stemming from something that happened in your family, or the legalistic approach to our common Faith that you were subjected in your young age. As I keep on trying to make you understand, my dear, even for that, you can be thankful, you know. Because what you are today is the sum of what you have been taught all your life! You see, God takes each one of us through different stages for our own good. And it is for each one of us to seek out His purposes in it and rejoice that even then, He was with us or we wouldn’t be where we are today. Good can come of anything if we allow God to show us why it had to be so. That was what gave Joseph such peace and generosity of heart.
And isn’t it wonderful to know today that what you have been through in the past can be of invaluable help to those who are going through similar things today? Isn’t it wonderful to know that that you have grown since then? How else can I reassure you that growth and progress is part of our spiritual life? And that the day challenges end is the day you stop moving beyond what you thought you knew in the past and start dying spiritually? To speak for myself, I have reached a point in my spiritual life where I panic if I do not experience or at least get excited when a better understanding of God and His Ways dawn on me. You see, my constant prayer is to see God more clearly, love Him more dearly, and follow Him more nearly day by day. And I add hear Him more clearly to the bargain. Know that chorus by any chance? If not, I must sing it to you someday. The most beautiful part of it all is the ever-growing assurance that God answers prayers.
Ask, seek, knock… and praise the Lord at times, for new every morning is His love. So why don’t you just relax and move on. And while you may feel or even say you have, your occasional reaction especially when you are sharing with me who have never ceased to reassure you that I understand exactly why you may feel that way, makes it clear to me you have not. You seem to want to over-compensate and shift to the other extreme. But I assure you that is not going to help you much.
I guess that is why I was desperate to have you hear me out on this! Having come to this Truth at a relatively advanced age, I guess I felt compelled to impress it on you, a representative of the younger generation. I wanted to get you to understand at all cost, to engrave it in your consciousness that youthfulness is no excuse for any contrary position on this. If you research deeper on this I am sure you will discover from Bible accounts that it is fundamental to propelling a young person into his or her destiny.
Quite frankly, I consider it my most precious legacy to you. Towards the end, I allowed myself to be distracted from my objective by the seemingly unending silence. You see, I had decided I would not be the one to break it, because I had a niggling feeling it was more of a protest than anything else! Yet another reason the medal descended to bronze. Which also explains why even now, in spite of your ‘bronze-gilded’ yielding of the floor to me, I am still concerned that you might not be convinced.