Circuit Thoughts

The celebrations have passed, the fireworks are being put away. The nation’s 247th birthday is now history.

You know, building up to this past week we have heard a lot of noise. As soon as the fireworks vendors opened shop, the bangs and booms started happening. Our pets became terrified, and in some areas, it was hard to get to bed early because of all the fireworks going off. This all culminated into one great big blast on the 4th of July.

The booms in some places were deafening. Although the lights and designs were awe inspiring, the bang and whistles were a bit overwhelming. But after the last mortar was fired, and the last whizbang lit, an amazing thing happened.

There was silence. All was quiet. And in this silence, it got me to thinking. How deafening was the silence at Yorktown after three weeks of constant bombardment? Or in 1918 on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, how quiet did it get on the front? What about the silence after the guns were stilled in Europe, or the Islands of Japan? That all had to be very strange and almost alien, didn’t it?

We tend to live in a very noisy world. We wake up to an alarm, there is the sound of the barking dogs and the waking children. The TV is on, and the coffee is loud as it percolates/drips its dark libation. Noise is all around us. In fact, when it gets quiet, we prepare for something to happen.

In 1 Kings 19, Elijah finds himself in this “alien” world. He just won the ultimate sacrificial contest with the priests of Baal. Then he had them killed. At that point queen Jezebel orders a hit on Elijah and he runs. He ends up in a cave on Mount Horeb. Eventually God comes there and looks in and says, “Elijah, what are you doing here?” Elijah responds with a litany of complaints and abuses. He talks about how he is the only one following God, how the queen Jezebel is out to kill him and now he is all alone.

At this point God says to Elijah, “Go forth and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” Elijah does and God shows him great wind, but God wasn’t in the wind, and then a great earthquake, God wasn’t there either. God then creates a great fire, but He wasn’t in the fire. Finally, God makes a gentle breeze, and Elijah found God in that breeze.

We let noise take over. To truly get to know God we need to be in a quiet place. Adam walked with God in the Garden of Eden; Christ conversed with his father in the Garden of Gethsemane. The point is to truly converse with God we need quiet places. We need silence.

Setting aside some daily time of quiet would not hurt any of us. It takes noise for our ears to hear, but it takes silence for our hearts to hear God. Something to think about.

Shalom my friends.

See you in church.