+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
For quite a while, now, I’ve to spend some time every day in silent prayer and meditation, and if you know me very well you’ll realize how difficult this can be for me. We seem these days to populate our lives with noise, and I am as bad an offender as any in this regard. I listen to podcasts when I’m cooking dinner and doing laundry. My phone is constantly alerting me to emails and text messages which are often important and time sensitive and require quick response, but which do tend to invade the silence that all of us need from time to time. I do not believe I am alone in being captive (to a certain extent) to the noisy world in which we live. Turning the noise off, even for a few minutes sometimes seems beyond our ability.
In this morning’s Old Testament lesson, Elijah has retreated to Mount Horeb, which other biblical authors named Mount Sinai (the same place God had given the Law to Moses). He was seeking refuge from King Ahab and especially from Ahab’s wife Jezebel who desired the death of the prophet for challenging and defeating the followers of the pagan god Baal in a sort of tournament of miracles.
We can assume, though, that Elijah was looking for more than just a hiding place. He had already found a safe haven in the wilderness, and despite his own melancholy (which led him to desire death from starvation), God’s angels had ministered to him and kept him from falling prey to his depression. That Elijah made the long trek to Horeb—which we are told took him forty days and forty nights—suggests that he was looking for something more than a “hidey-hole”. Rather, I believe he was seeking some kind of message from God, and what better place to find such a message than at that very place in which God’s greatest moment of self-disclosure up to that point (namely, the revelation of the Law to Moses) had occurred.
No doubt Elijah was hoping for a grand display of power. Moses had seen a burning bush on this mountain, and God had enclosed Horeb with clouds and fire while he communed with Moses at the summit. Elijah got what he was expecting in part: a wind strong enough to split rocks, a tremendous earthquake, and a firestorm. But in all these powerful signs, Elijah did not hear the message he desired from God. It was only after these apparently cataclysmic events that Elijah heard the still small voice of God, breaking through sheer silence.
And what does Elijah hear in that silence? It is not just a sense of calm or of affirmation. Elijah hears words of instruction. He gets his marching orders, as it were. He is told very specifically to anoint Hazael as king of Aram (in what today is Syria) and to anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king of Israel and to anoint Elisha as his successor as God’s prophet.
This is why quiet time with God is terribly important. We’re not just out to feel God’s calming presence in some abstract sense. That is certainly a secondary benefit we can gain from prayer, but it’s not the only reason we should listen in prayer as much as we talk. We need silence so that God can tell us what to do. He may tell us by giving us a sense of affirmation about some plans we mean to make or by implanting in our hearts feelings of unease about a course of action we ought not to take. God may even speak to us in discernible language as in Elijah’s case. I don’t know how often this happens. God has never spoken to me in the Queen’s English, but it’s possible.
However God chooses to speak to us, though, we have to give God an opportunity. We have to carve out of our busy schedules moments for silence. I find that simply being quiet and present before God can do wonders, as hard as it is for me to do that. Five or ten minutes of silent prayer and meditation can do wonders as we seek to become closer to God.
This can be done in the course of one’s regular, rather wordy daily prayers (that’s what I do) or as a completely separate exercise. However you manage to work silent, prayerful contemplation into your routine, if you try it I think you’ll find that God will speak to you in a manner more clear and compelling than if we wait for an earthquake or a burning bush before we pay attention. Whether God speaks to you with an honest-to-God voice or (more likely) with a small but discernible murmur in your heart, God will speak and will give you that which is needful to accomplish His perfect Will.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.