Silence that Speaks!

The Surprising Quietness of the Christmas Characters! 

Christmas is a dynamic season! Side by side with believers who are rejoicing in the birth of our Savior and enjoying abundant Christian lives (Psalm 119:17; John 10:10) are other believers suffering through seasons of mourning and sadness.  To dispel that darkness, Jesus came to be the light of the world, to shine the glory of God into our hearts. Knowing Jesus gives us the promise that, despite anything that happens in this fleeting vapor of life, we will forever enjoy the full glory of his majesty and our mirth forever.

But there are other dynamics during the Christmas season – loud and quiet, visible and invisible, extraordinary and ordinary. Many will use December, especially the week before New Year's, to set new resolutions for their health, finances, family, career, and, for those who name the name of Jesus, a new commitment to a deeper spiritual life.

But the challenge is that during the festivities and activities of rightfully celebrating Christmas, it is hard to focus on sacrificing time and energy. Difficult indeed is the necessary task of pivoting from loud and bright celebrations to the quiet and subdued devotional life that will move us forward spiritually like “fish play in the depths of the sea, and the bird mounts aloft in the air.”1

But what if the very story of Christmas itself contains encouragement to be alone and quiet before God? It does fourfold! That might sound odd since we have angels speaking and singing, a star in the sky, dialogue and worship, strange men from the East, the rushed flight to Egypt, etc. But here are four examples of “silence that speaks,” each one a call for us to make 2026 an imitation of these precious quiet-to-loud, hidden-to-visible, and ordinary-to-extraordinary patterns:

Zechariah

Many know that Zechariah was struck mute for not believing the joyous message of Gabriel (Luke 2:18-20). It was clearly God's loving discipline to encourage that holy man to grow even more, becoming the preparer of the Christ preparer (verse 6). He would be instrumental in raising his son, John the Baptist, to walk in the ways of the Lord, ready to “‘prepare the way of the Lord'.”

(Luke 3:4, quoting Isaiah 40:3)

Zechariah had to be silent for more than 9 months, leaving him with few options. Because he finally opened his mouth at the naming of his son and burst forth with praise (Luke 1:63-64), we know that those months of silence were months of godly prayer and meditation. With no written Bible and no verbal communication in or out of his head, Zechariah was blessed with the better part of the year to ponder and meditate on the great works of God, both in the present and the near future. He thought about all the great promises of the past and future promises behind in redemptive history and anticipated their fulfillment! Great actions of God and for God are often preceded by great periods of silence and reflection.

None of us will do more for God publicly (aloud and in the sight of others) than the time we have spent with him privately. Even a priest, both righteous and blameless, needed time in silence. Those months of silence speak, don’t they? They speak to us in our busy and loud lives, reminding us that we must commit to adequate (even abundant) devotional time with the Lord in 2026. 

 

Elizabeth

Zechariah’s time “off the grid” was involuntary verbal confinement.

But his wife chose silence and seclusion voluntarily!  Instead of giving in to a vindictive streak of telling everyone about her long-awaited and “greater than theirs” child, especially to those who had thought of her with disgrace (Luke 1:25), she chose to go into seclusion during her pregnancy.

What Zacharias was forced to do, she chose to do, isolating herself socially to be alone with God. She, too, had a special call. Like all with a high calling, she needed to seek God in private and silence that speaks.  It is preparation to live out loud for the Lord before others.

John the Baptist

And what kind of a son did this “quiet couple” raise?  A son who also went into seclusion! He disappears from the scene at the end of Luke chapter 1, alone in the wilderness: “And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel.” (Luke 1:80). And even when John began his ministry, he stayed in that quiet wilderness. To hear John, you had to leave the comfort and busyness of village life and trek out to see him. Jesus later asked the crowd: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” (Matthew 11:7)

The wilderness was where God often prepared his people in quiet, hidden, and ordinary ways for loud, visible, and extraordinary service and feats of faith. Moses had to stay there for forty years to be prepared to lead the Exodus. Israel was prepared for the promised land during their wilderness wanderings.  David was alone with the Lord as a shepherd learning to live before the Lord, long before he was called to become Israel’s greatest king. Elijah, the forerunner of John the Baptist, was known to dwell in the wilderness.

Jesus

Okay, but surely you can’t say that Jesus needed to be in silent seclusion! But he did! Jesus disappears from the scene! We know nothing about his childhood from the magi visit until age 12. Then, his silent, hidden, and ordinary life is “off the record” from age twelve (except his glory, amazing shining for a moment in the Temple Q&A of Luke 2:41-49) until adulthood. Luke leaves us only with a summary of the next twenty-plus years of his life.2 “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52).

Notice that he grew in the quietness of village life, not in the loudness and brilliance of his later ministry. He grew then, too, but only by maintaining a habit of rising early or staying up late to be alone with the Lord. What was happening in all those years of silence, away from the public eye, living in an obscure rural village? He was praying, studying the scriptures, meditating, and memorizing in preparation for the greatest public ministry ever.

Further, just before his public ministry began, God sent him into the wilderness for final quiet preparation and testing (Luke 4:1). He was living out physically his heart commitment to live in quiet dependence on “every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3). Then and only then was he prepared by the Scriptures and the Spirit to speak such that everyone “marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth” (Luke 4:22).

The Rest of Us!

So, as we celebrate the brightness and loudness of Christmas with praises to God, marveling at the coming of the Light into our dark world, let us remember that the most important part of our lives is lived alone with God. Vance Havner wrote, “It is high time we learned that in this nerve-wracking, maddening modern rush, we have let the spirit of the times rob us utterly of meditation, devotion, rest, the passive side of our Christian experience, without which we cannot be truly active to the glory of God.”3

Plan special times this Christmas season to get alone with God and enjoy his presence. If you have a wonderfully busy household, that might require a quiet drive or a walk in a park. Then, plan better for your devotional life in 2026. Open his word to read, meditate on, and memorize it. Make each day such a day that by your actions, you say to the Lord the words of young Samuel: “Speak, for your servant hears” (1 Samuel 3:10)! 

 

1Harvey Newcomb. The Young Lady's Guide to the Harmonious Development of Christian Character, (Vestavia Hills, AL: Solid Ground Christian Books ), 167.

2I am assuming that Jesus was in his mid-thirties when he began his ministry, not 30: “If he was born in 6 or 5 BC, as is most likely, Jesus would have been approximately thirty-two to thirty-four years old in late AD 28 until AD 30, which falls well within the range of him being  “about thirty years of age.” Andreas Köstenberger, “April 3, AD 33: Why We Believe We Can Know the Exact Date Jesus Died,”  Center for Biblical Studies, 2 Apr., 2020. https://cbs.mbts.edu/2020/04/08/april-3-ad-33-why-we-believe-we-can-know-the-exact-date-jesus-died/

3Vance Havner, The Vance Havner Quotebook: Sparkling Gems From the Most Quoted Preacher in America, ed. Dennis J. Hester (Baker Book House, 1986), 35.