Thought for Today
1 Kings 19:11 He said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: . . . 7 a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
Mark 6:47 When evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land.
Acts 15:12 The whole assembly kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles.
Silence and solitude? Raucous cacophony and densely packed crowd? Which is your preference? Are you like Elijah, Qoheleth, Jesus or the crowd listening to Barnabas and Paul? Or, do you find comfort and reassurance as did the psalmist, “42:4 These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.”
I have stood on the top of one of the Rocky Mountains in the early morning after an overnight snowfall. I have experienced the solitude when the only sound you could hear was the ‘swoosh’ of your skis in the soft powder. I have also been in the Astrodome during a football game when the roar of the crowd drowned out the announcers’ voices.
Many factors influence my own preference concerning silence, solitude, noise and crowds. My preference is variable with age, nature of an event, my mood and the state of my life at a particular time (maybe with weather and barometric pressure?) When I was younger, my general preference was more often the noise and the crowd. As I have aged, I am trending more toward silence and solitude.
As I think about this today, the question that first comes to mind is “Where is God in all of this?” Elijah did not find God in the wind, earthquake or fire. I have been in hurricanes. Recently, I experienced my first earthquake, admittedly a very minor one. Thankfully, I have never experienced the devastation of fires like those recently in California. When I ask, “Where is God in all of this?” my answer is “God is in all of this!” During the pandemic, Greta and I spent hours sitting on our patio, watching the birds soar above the field behind our house, watching the squirrels cavort in the trees, and enjoying the “sheer silence.”
In seminary, I learned about general revelation, “God’s self-disclosure and self-communication in the universe and created world.” (Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms) I still find God in all the world I see around me, in the trees, the birds and animals, in nature. I also find God each Sunday morning as I enter the empty sanctuary before worship begins and then later as people come in to worship. I find God in the music, the hymns, in the very act of corporate worship.
I know that Jesus regularly withdrew from the crowds, sometimes ascending a mountain or escaping into the wilderness to be alone with God. Equally however, and thankfully, Jesus also preached to and taught the crowds. The Sermon on the Mount was not delivered in silence and solitude. It was delivered to a crowd. When Jesus entered the Temple in Jerusalem, he was not alone. The Temple would have been a place of God’s people thronging together. Even today, the Wailing Wall, the only surviving portion of that Temple, is still a place of crowds and commotion.
Maybe Qoheleth was right. Maybe there is “a time for every matter under heaven,” a time and place for silence and solitude as well as a time and place for thronging crowds and a cacophony of sound. “Where is God in all of this?” “God is in all of this!”
Stay safe, find God all around you, trust God,
Pastor Ray