When Absence Speaks

Perhaps all of us have experienced the phenomenon described as “ghosting.” For those of you who haven’t heard of it, “ghosting” is when someone essentially disappears from all communication with you, particularly on social media, without a trace.

Absence is a ghost, if I might borrow the term. It haunts us in the quiet like an echo of last words that never quite fades. Those “ghosted” are left with a silent emptiness where there was once a responsive presence.

The truth is, though, absence always says something. It echoes, “Something is wrong.”

There are a lot of absences in the Bible. The first was when Adam did not show up for his walk with God, and has remained in constant retreat from God since. In Israel’s straying, God held out his hands to his truant people for hundreds of years, beckoning them into presence. Isaiah says, “I have spread out my hands all day long to a rebellious people….” After hundreds of years of calling out to them, God sent His people into exile, away from the temple, His dwelling place among them.

Then at the appointed time, God Himself became absent. Ezekiel describes this moment in chapter 10. God left his dwelling place, and Ezekiel watches His glory hover outside Jerusalem to the east.

Did anyone feel the absence?

Importantly, before God left the temple as described in Ezekiel, He promised to return and restore his people to himself. God’s final word to His chosen people was not absence, but the promise of presence. Then, as we see in the opening lines of the New Testament, God comes to His own again. After 400 years of silence, he fulfilled this promise and spoke again to His people in Jesus, the Word himself.

The good news is that God came back in order to reconcile all things to Himself. Because the Word came, lived, died, and rose to reconcile hostile absentees with God. Now, those who know Jesus as their hope of reconciliation with God can hold to the promise that they will never be left as we long for the day when God’s final dwelling will be with man forever.

Sometimes, when all the words have been used and the gap in understanding never crossed, absence is all we have left to say. Absence meant as the last word is rejection. However, absence spoken in hope that it will not be the last word is an act of love. These ghostly echoes of last words can open the way for the beloved to listen. In fact, absence only speaks in the context of love. Where there is no love, there can be no absence.

If those in your community have left, be willing to grapple with the possibility that up until the point of absence, you had not been willing to listen. In those cases, don’t let absence be the final ghostly word to you. In love, listen for the echoes of last words with hope. Just as we should never cease in the work of sanctification, we should never cease in the work of reconciliation. It may not come about in this life, but we should pray and strive for it, and all the more as we move toward the day when all things will be reconciled in heaven and on earth.

Sadly, some absences will haunt us until that day. After Adam and Eve sinned, God put enmity where enmity should be (Genesis 3:15), and there is no fellowship between light and darkness (2 Corinthians 6:14).Thankfully though, our hope of reconciliation, particularly with brothers and sisters in Christ, extends beyond the horizons of short lives.

Be patient then. For the sake of love, listen well to word of absence, and as far as you are able, don’t let it have the final say.