The Clearing
Finding God in the Silence of Abandonment
"Clearing" by Martha Postlethwaite (from Addiction and Recovery: A Spiritual Pilgrimage*)*
Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently, until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worthy of rescue.
"Messiah, is he? King of Israel? Then let him climb down from that cross. We'll all become believers then!" Even the men crucified alongside him joined in the mockery. At noon the sky became extremely dark. The darkness lasted three hours. At three o'clock, Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"…But Jesus, with a loud cry, gave his last breath. At that moment the Temple curtain ripped right down the middle. When the Roman captain standing guard in front of him saw that he had quit breathing, he said, "This has to be the Son of God!"
— Mark 15:32–34, 37–39 (MSG)
Have you ever felt abandoned? If I am being completely honest about this season of my life, I cannot say that feeling has been a stranger to me. There have been days when the silence from God felt less like peace and more like absence. Days when I looked up and the sky seemed dark not from weather, but from something I couldn't name. And I think that's normal. I think more people carry that feeling than they are willing to admit out loud.
That is where Postlethwaite's poem meets us. When everything is going sideways — when the job isn't working out, when relationships feel frayed, when your best effort doesn't seem to be enough — the temptation is to reach for something big. A grand gesture. A breakthrough. A definitive answer from God that arrives in a burning bush or at least a strongly worded email. We want the grandiose solution.
But the poem pushes back on that instinct. Don't reach for grandiose. Instead, create a clearing. Stop. Wait. Let the song of your life — your actual calling, your actual direction — fall into your own cupped hands. And recognize it when it comes. Only then will you know what it is you have to offer.
I keep thinking about the garden. Jesus, before all of this — before the mockery, before the cross, before the darkness at noon — went to a garden and created a clearing. He prayed. He invited the disciples to come and keep watch with him. Not once. Not twice. Three times he came back and invited them into that space. He was modeling something. He was showing them — showing us — that before you can give yourself fully to this world, you have to go to the garden first.
And then we get to the cross. And we hear the words that stop you cold every time: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly — the darkness had lasted three hours, and now this. This is not a composed theological statement. This is a man in agony, in genuine desolation, calling out to a Father who has gone quiet.
And here is the strange, sacred thing: that cry is the clearing.
Jesus, hanging on the cross, is still praying. Still directing his voice toward the Father even when the silence is overwhelming. He is not manufacturing faith. He is not performing peace. He is being honest with God about what the moment feels like. That is the posture of a man whose cupped hands are still open, even when they are trembling, even when they are empty.
We do not know what was happening in the interior life of God the Father in that moment. The theology is deep and goes beyond what one chapter can hold. But what Mark wants us to see is the cry, not the explanation. He wants us to feel the weight of it. Mark is not trying to explain the reason for the agony — he is simply reporting it. And that honesty is its own kind of invitation.
What follows is not more darkness. At the moment Jesus breathed his last, the Temple curtain ripped right down the middle — and the Roman captain standing guard said, "This has to be the Son of God." The clearing that Jesus created — in the garden, in the cry, in the surrender — did not lead to silence. It led to revelation. It tore something open. A pagan soldier, of all people, recognized who was in front of him.
That is what happens when we stop reaching for the grandiose and create the clearing instead. Something gets revealed. Something gets torn open that was closed before.
So what does that look like on an ordinary Tuesday? It looks like getting up before the house wakes up and sitting with your Bible and letting the words do their slow work. It looks like praying honestly when honest prayer is all you have — not polished, not composed, just real. It looks like trusting that the song of your life is still forming in the silence, even when you cannot hear it yet. Especially then.
The world is worth rescuing. You are part of that rescue. But you do not begin by saving it. You begin by creating a clearing, and waiting, and recognizing what God places in your hands.
Reflect:
What does "creating a clearing" look like practically in your daily rhythm? What would you need to clear away to make space?
