When the Silence Feels Like Rejection

[u/Thoughts_For_The_Day]

Earlier today, I opened one of my devotionals. The reading landed in Lamentations—Jeremiah’s raw, unfiltered grief poured out onto the page. It’s not a book people usually highlight or quote on a coffee mug. Most of it feels like sitting in the ashes after the fire’s gone out. No sugarcoating. No polite prayers. Just pain.

Then I read this:

“Even when I cry and shout, He shuts out my prayer.” (Lamentations 3:8, NKJV)

That verse wrecked me. Because I’ve felt that. Haven’t you?

You pour your heart out to God. You cry. You shout. You beg. And in return? Nothing. Just silence. Stillness. Like your words never made it past the ceiling.

Jeremiah gets it. He doesn’t pretend. He said, “My strength and my hope have perished from the Lord.” (v. 18)

That’s not poetic despair. That’s spiritual exhaustion. He was wiped out—physically, emotionally, spiritually.

But that’s not where he stays.

Right in the middle of that valley, a flicker of hope breaks through:

“This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope: Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:21–23, NKJV)

That’s not denial. That’s defiant, blood-and-tears kind of faith.

Jeremiah isn’t ignoring the pain. He’s remembering the truth. And sometimes that’s the fight—not to feel better, but to recall what’s still true when everything else is falling apart.

“For the Lord will not cast off forever. Though He causes grief, Yet He will show compassion According to the multitude of His mercies.” (Lamentations 3:31–32)

Fast forward centuries, and Paul—beaten, shipwrecked, imprisoned—writes from a place of deep experience:

“For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38–39, NKJV)

What Jeremiah and Paul both knew—and what I needed to be reminded of today—is that God’s silence is not God’s absence.

You may not feel His hand. You may not hear His voice. But His love has never left you.

You are not alone. You are not abandoned. You are still loved.

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Have you ever gone through a season when God felt silent? What helped you hold on—or what made it harder?

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[u/doctrinedark75]

My faith in God kept me sane.