Silence!

The truth, of course, is that we all wish God was a little more obvious. We, like Elijah, are looking for big signs and clear signals. But God’s love is not like the over-bearing parent who wants to do every little thing for their child to the degree that the child never does anything on their own. No, instead God shows up and speaks up and gets super quiet in ways that we can scarcely imagine but make all the difference. God’s silence and God's speech both speak volumes into our lives because, as Elijah learned, God is always with us. Elijah’s talking got in the way of his listening. Trust me, if you talk long enough and loud enough you can convince yourself that your words are more important than the Word made flesh. He had to get quiet and hear the silence before he could truly respond to God’s question, a question that set him firmly on the foundation of God’s grace. And God’s grace is fundamentally strange. It is everything for nothing. It is life to the lifeless, hope to the hopeless, and joy to the joyless. It is quiet in a world that has grown too loud. It is stillness when the world moves too quickly. It is amazing precisely because it comes to us as a gift...