Today’s reading at church came from 1 Kings 19:11-13:
“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 in the mouth of the cave.”
I am in love with this passage because it answers a vital question, one that we all ask at some point in our lives—where is God?
And that answer, according to this passage is that God is in “a gentle whisper” (NIV version), in “sheer silence” (NRSV version) or in “a still small voice” (King James version).
In other words, sometimes you have to be really quiet and still to hear Him, to see Him, to feel His presence.
When I think of quietness and stillness, I think of the golf course just outside the small New York town where I grew up. I never played golf there, but in the winter, when the snow blanketed bunker, fairway and green, my dad and I would cross country ski there in the dead of night with only the stars lighting the way.
I have to admit that some nights it was hard to appreciate the beauty of where we were, mostly because it was so cold. Those nights that we skied were the coldest I can ever remember being, so cold that when we got back to the car, my fingers hurt as they thawed in front of the heater.
The other problem was that cross country skiing is hard. Cross country skis are narrower and harder to balance than downhill skis. So every time my dad and I would ski down the tiniest little hill, I would wind up on my backside while my dad swished on through the snow ahead.
Even my dad, thinking he could manage what must have been a bunker in the spring and summer, but was, during winter, a large mound of snow, tumbled head over feet once. I still remember staring down into the darkness at the bottom of the hill—it was very dark—and calling out to my dad.
“Dad?”
Silence and then, "Yeah?"
“Are you okay?”
"Yeah?"
His voice sounded miles away.
I think it was then, as I waited for him to crawl back up the hill that I stopped for a moment and stared at the night sky. Every breath hurt. Every breath meant that the cold seared its way into my lungs. My cheeks hurt. My eyes burned. I couldn’t even feel my mouth. But I ignored all of that and looked to the stars.
This is the thing about the cold. When air is warm and hot, like it is in Florida, it’s thick and hazy and heavy, but when the air is cold, like it was that night, it is crisp and clear and even stars that are billions of miles away seem so close you could touch them.
And it was in this time, this quiet time, when the only sound was of my dad squinching his way back through the snow—it was in this time that I felt God’s presence and His power.
