Shuddering Silence

Elijah is running for his life. He runs through Israel, to the very edge of the
kingdom of Judah and then continues running into the wilderness. He runs until he
can run no more.

Falling beneath a Juniper tree, Elijah cries out to die. He yields his spirit up
to God and everything goes dark.

But he doesn’t die.

An Angel wakes him, feeds him and sends him deeper and farther into the desert.
For forty days, Elijah wanders deeper and deeper into the harsh, barren world of
emptiness.

This same Elijah proclaimed the rain would stop in Israel and it did; raised a
dead boy to life; humiliated and killed prophets of Baal. This prophet of God who
came from nowhere must now find God in no place—Mt. Horeb.

Mt. Horeb, also known as Mt. Sinai, is the same place Moses met God. Cloaked in
lightening and smoke, Moses entered into the terrifying grip of God’s grace. The
children of Israel could not touch this mountain for fear of mortal danger. In
this holy, mysterious place that is no place, Elijah ascends to find God.

He leaves behind human civilization, human strength, human wisdom. He stands naked
before a holy God. In the hole of a cave, he waits for an audience with the
Creator.

Suddenly a violent wind rips through the mountain. The intensity is so great that
the mountain begins to crumble and shake. The earth is collapsing. In the midst of
this chaos, an explosion. Fire surrounds Elijah like lava consuming the land. And
then everything stops.

Shuddering silence.

God is present.

Elijah has come to the end of himself. He must face his images, his idols, his
limitations of God. He must face the fact that he is not God. He is finite and
fallen. His limited view of God and his inflated view of self fall before the holy
quiet of the Creator.

We need the desert. We need our own smug revelations challenged—again and again.
Like Elijah, we somehow think we understand God. He knew him in outward power; he
faced Him in living silence. In our understanding, we seek to domesticate the
untamed Creator. We polish Him. Then like a genie in a bottle, we wait for him to
appear and grant us our wishes.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

We also want to be god. Like Elijah, we compare ourselves with others. From our
own deeply flawed perception, we determine some are better than us and some are
worse. We often secretly despise those around us who succeed. For only we deserve
to be exalted. We are humiliated in His holiness and face our absolute dependence
upon His mercy and grace. We breathe every breath by the grace of God.

Lord, have mercy! Christ have mercy! Lord have mercy!

We go to the desert to be stripped naked. For when we are naked before the Lord,
he can clothe us with his glory.