Silence

This morning I experienced something that is extremely rare in my life – silence. Total silence. I had just finished the required exercises for after-care from my hip joint replacement. My routine after my morning activity (including walking a quarter-mile after exercises) is to get into my easy chair with an ice pack firmly around my elevated leg, and to leave it there for about ten minutes.

After I got settled into the recliner, it suddenly occurred to me that I was engulfed in total silence. Even the overworked air-conditioning system was silent on this pleasant early October morning. Total silence. I found it so rare that the experience caused me to think deeply. Here I was – silent before my Creator, who reminded me to “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). It is a sad commentary on my life that I am such a stranger to silence, because it is in silence that we get that rare experience of actually feeling the presence of the Almighty.

My “silent” moments reminded me of the prophet Elijah, when he had come from a traumatic and exhausting conflict with King Ahab and his wife Jezebel. He had run for his life, a distance of about 25 miles, until he collapsed with exhaustion, even asking the Lord to take his life. After eating food provided by an angel and then resting, he resumed his escape for 40 days until he reached Mount Horeb. Ironically, the other name for this famous mountain was Sinai, the “mountain of God” (1 Kings 19:8).

As the text of 1 Kings 19 continues, the Lord spoke to Elijah once again: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”  He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me, too.”

“The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

“Then a voice said to him, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’”

It is just here that I will leave the text and paraphrase what happened next.  After Elijah’s “reminding” the Lord about how much he had done in His name and how rebellious and ruthless the Lord’s chosen ones had been, and how they were bent on killing him, God replied in essence, “Elijah, get back to work! You are my prophet – now act like it. I have work for you to do. Go back the way you came and anoint Hazael king over Aram. Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel and anoint Elisha . . . to succeed you as prophet.”   

As a final admonition of humility directed toward Elijah, the Lord said, “And, by the way, I have 7,000 loyal people in Israel – all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.” Isn’t it interesting that when we are down and depressed, we tend to exaggerate almost everything negative in our lives.

Back to my experience with a “silent” moment this morning. For me, at age 84, having served the Lord as best I can for many years, God’s gentle whisper said to me, “I know you are tired. I know you have done your best to serve me for a long time. I know you are eagerly anticipating your eternal reward. But look around you, there is work for you to do. And by the way, I have a lot more people who acknowledge Jesus as Lord who are my children than you think there are. And, while the ‘load’ of the world is not on your shoulders, it is time for you to look around and see what you can do in my name. And in my own good time, you will find your reward.”

Somehow, in compact fashion that I will never understand, all those images flashed through my mind. So, after a reasonable time with the ice pack, I put it back in the freezer and went back to work, with these thoughts dominating my mind.