Not Earth, Wind or Fire

Friday of week 10 in Ordinary Time

1 Kings 19:9,11-16

Elijah is in hiding from Jezebel…after the whole God contest and the slaughtering of the 450 prophets of Baal…she wants him dead.  The scene before today’s text has God feeding the starved and suicidal Elijah and sending him on a long trek to the “Mountain of God’ aka Horeb aka Sinai.

So Elijah knows that God is not done with him yet.  The mighty wind, the terrifying earthquake, the consuming fire, are NOT the Lord. 

Finally, Elijah hears "a sound of sheer silence" …the NRSV translation of 19:12.  There is nothing quite so unsettling as that non-sound.  There is nothing to distract from the truth.  It must be faced.  He wraps his face in his cloak and walks to the mouth of the cave.

I wonder if my life, my world, my psyche can get quiet and still enough to hear the sound of “sheer silence.”  I am practicing.  My Yoga instructor says to me often, “Cindy, you are trying too hard.”  That is an appropriate comment for me several times a day in differing circumstances.  Elijah was trying too hard to see and hear God in the places and events he thought most appropriate. 

The sound of sheer silence.  It was there all along.  It still is.