What can be said about a person who remains silent, and what discoveries can be made about someone who says very little? How can we look into a quiet person’s heart and understand the structure of his inner world?
When young people plan to start a family, they find a great deal of time to communicate with each other. They enjoy listening to the other person and sharing things about themselves. They reveal their inner worlds, recall many interesting stories from their lives, listen with their hearts, and are prepared to set every task aside simply to spend time together. During this period, the entire world becomes distant and uninteresting compared with the person before you.
While spending time in this way, people come to know one another and open themselves so that they may also know themselves better.
How can you determine what you like and dislike if you never try anything? How can you discover who you truly are if your inner world rests in the land of silence and the world of your thoughts and feelings finds no outlet through words and communication?
It is very difficult to identify a foolish person while he remains silent. At such a time, he looks very wise and appears observant and sensible. But as soon as he opens his mouth, you immediately discover with whom you are dealing.
Actions also reveal much about a person, but they will never disclose the beauty of his heart, although they may bring considerable benefit to someone. We expect actions from one another and try through them to determine another person’s character and display our own. Yet all my good deeds cannot reveal to you the intimate and inaccessible things stored in the depths of my heart that do not manifest themselves in any way.
What would we know about God if He told us nothing about Himself? Through our guesses, we would create for Him an image of our own invention from the available facts. The Bible reveals the depths of God’s heart to us through brief revelations scattered throughout Scripture. We must find, remember, and compare them all. God says a great deal about Himself through nature and His creation. But the Creator reveals Himself most fully in the life and character of Jesus.
Unfortunately, although we know a great deal about Christ, we know Him very little. Such knowledge comes only through personal communication with Him. The Holy Spirit reveals many aspects of the Savior’s life to us in a new light. Through the eyes of faith, I can discern details I never noticed before. In prayer, I plead for a deeper knowledge of God. He speaks to me in the language of revelation and admits me into His inner world. I find rest and come to know my Creator, although I do not hear His voice, and my personal knowledge is not entirely understandable to my friends. God has a special voice through which He communicates with us. Not everyone is able to hear it, and each person who does hear it hears it in his own way.
But in His desire to reveal Himself to us, the Lord gave us the beautiful commandment to love one another. Love implies close communication. Only through communication do we come to know more closely the person we love and open ourselves to him through our love.
Why do many marriages collapse immediately after the wedding? Often it is because the deep discovery of one another ceases, romantic infatuation evaporates, hormones subside, hearts close, and there is nothing left to discuss. Discoveries are replaced by faultfinding, the pursuit of personal ambitions, warfare against another person’s opinions, and dissatisfaction with the other person’s behavior. Where were these things before marriage? Communication and the knowledge of one another gained through it covered all the corrupt qualities of the soul. The other person’s inner world enchanted you through its uniqueness, and it seemed that no better person existed in the world. But time is the best means of destroying the castles in the air built by the imagination. The longer you know a person through communication and actions, the better you understand with whom you are dealing. Hasty marriages often lead quickly to disappointment.
At times, I have spoken with people whose marriages were on the brink of collapse but had not yet fallen apart. If there was no violence or adultery, finding the cause of the discord was very simple. The enemy of the soul seeks to separate close people from one another and immerse us in the world of our own ambitions, opinions, and stereotypes. In this love of self, the surrounding world is lost, and I fail to understand what wonderful people surround me. Yet they become wonderful to me only when they begin opening themselves to me.
Think of some of your friends and try to understand which of them are especially dear and close to you. Then ask yourself, ‘Why are they so dear?’ Most likely, you will discover that they have close, trusting communication with you.
Of course, we are all different. We perceive one another differently, and our understanding of this lesson will not be identical. Yet it is worth noting that communication between us plays the most important role in our relationships, in our love for one another, and in our knowledge of truth. Knowing implies communication.
Physical intimacy with a spouse opens the world of feelings through touch and sensation. Although this brings temporary pleasure, such experiences merely open the door to deeper knowledge at the spiritual level. If everything ends there, emptiness replaces communication and, like a solid wall, separates the spouses’ hearts in silence.
What would we know about God if He did not communicate with us? Only the facts presented in the Bible. And what do you know about a friend with whom you do not communicate? Exactly as much as you heard during your last conversation.
You know much about me from these lessons, in which I also tell you certain things. I allow you into my world without knowing you. Yet through these accounts about myself, I seek to teach certain lessons of truth that the Lord reveals to me. You read and, through my inner world, come to know the One Who has revealed Himself to me. Later, when we meet personally, it is easy for you to open yourself because you already know me and trust me as a friend. All this takes place through the communication provided by these lessons and your responses to them.
Through this, however, the Lord teaches us also to love those who are near—the people whom we can embrace and look in the eyes. Communication with such people opens your heart to your friend and your friend’s heart to you. In these relationships, Jesus reveals His beauty to us as well, presenting us to one another as people through whom He desires to reveal Himself even more. Love works a miracle within this communication. I discover my friend’s unknown world, and he comes to know me. The presence of Christ within our fellowship allows us to enter deeply into revelations about one another without fearing anything.
How can I discover what treasures are hidden in the earth beneath my feet if I do not begin digging and searching for them? How can I discover my value if I sit in silence and open myself to no one?
How can you know a friend without communicating with him? How can you know God without speaking with Him? The answer is simple: you cannot. Decide for yourself, then, how you will love a friend without communication or a relationship with him. Good deeds are valuable and necessary, but they exert the right influence when a relationship and close communication exist between us. Discoveries of the soul come as we speak with one another and listen with the heart.
If I desire to see something great and hidden within my friend, God will reveal it to me through our communication, unveiling a new and unexplored world within my friend’s heart.
Bible Verses for Reflection
1 John 1:3–7; 2 Timothy 2:19; 1 Corinthians 1:9; 2 Corinthians 6:14; 13:13; Psalm 32:3–5; 94:17; Proverbs 3:32; 10:20–21; 16:21–24; 17:28; 25:11; Ephesians 4:20–24; Matthew 12:37; Ecclesiastes 3:7.