Everyone knows what it's like to feel like God is silent. In those times, the temptation is also to believe that He is absent or not working - perhaps he has forgotten or overlooked the world and our lives.
As we begin the Advent season, the opening of the infancy narrative of Luke's Gospel makes abundantly clear that God never forgets or overlooks anything. In fact, he moves and weaves together hundreds of years of history to accomplish his purposes in the world. Even more remarkably, He does all this while still remembering and responding to the prayers of individual men and women.