“THE LORD WAS NOT IN THE WIND”
1 Kings 19:11,12
“The Lord was not in the wind”
“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; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.”
It has been my experience that the Lord rarely shouts. He whispers, He prods, He nudges, but rarely does He shout.
Let me tell you a story. I am told it is true.
There was a man, a rather ordinary Christian man who lived a fairly ordinary life. He held a job and lived in a nice enough apartment, in a nice enough neighborhood, with his wife and two children. One evening he came home from work and was sitting down after dinner in front of the television.
He was not particularly accustomed to hearing the voice of God. He knew it happened, of course, because they talked about it in church sometimes, but it had never happened to him.
He had just taken off his shoes and settled in when he got an unexplained urge to get up, go to the store, and buy milk. He resisted the urge, because he knew they had milk in the fridge. Why should he go buy more?
But the urge would not go away. “Get up. Buy milk.”
He got up and looked in the fridge. Sure enough, there was plenty of milk, so he sat back down in front of the television.
“Get up. Buy milk.”
So he got up, put on his shoes, and told his wife he was going out to buy milk.
“Why?” she asked. “We have milk.”
“I don’t know,” he answered. Then he got in his car, went to the store, and bought milk, and bread, and peanut butter.
He put the bag on the front seat, then sat in his car, feeling rather foolish as he spoke aloud, “Well, God, I bought milk. Now what?”
He started his car and just drove. He found himself in a rather rough part of town. It was the part of town that nice, respectable people avoided, full of drug addicts, and homeless people, gangs, and crime.
He pulled off to the side of the road in front of a shabby brick tenement.
“Here.”
He could almost feel the pull towards the front door, rusty and practically falling off the hinges.
“Here? Lord, you must be kidding.”
“Here.”
So the man took the bag with the milk and the bread and the peanut butter, and walked to the door. He opened it, and his nostrils were assailed with the stench of unwashed bodies, and urine, and vomit. He stood silent for a moment, feeling more than a little foolish. He almost turned around to leave, but he felt rooted and could not move.
“Okay, God,” he said, giving in. “Just tell me where to go.”
He climbed the stairs to the third floor.
“Here.”
He stood in front of an apartment door. He heaved a great sigh, squared his shoulders, and knocked.
A woman answered the door. She was Latina, with long black hair and eyes red from weeping. “Si?”
He held out the bag. “Here,” he said. “This is for you.”
Puzzled, she took the bag, looked inside, then burst into tears.
A young boy about ten-years-old came to the door and looked in the bag. Then he too began to cry.
“Gracias, seňor,” the boy said through his tears. “The baby has had no milk for two days, and it has been longer than that for my brother and me. My father was killed a week ago, and we have no money. We just finished praying that somehow we could get milk for the baby.”
Quakers call this “being in the power of the Lord,” and such things happen more often than we hear about.
My old priest would often tell the story of how he took Communion to a parishioner who resided in a nursing home. He brought just enough Host for her and for himself. He knew there were only two Hosts in the pyx, because he packed it himself.
Just as he was about to administer the sacrament, two nurses came in and asked if they could share in the Communion as they hadn’t been able to go to church that day. Fully prepared to break the Host to provide for them, he was shocked to discover that in the pyx were not two Hosts, but four.
Can I explain this? No, I cannot. Did the priest make a mistake? Or did God provide the extra Hosts?
I’ve talked to many a person who told me they never heard the voice of God. But, I wonder how often we are in the power of the Lord without realizing it. How often do we heed the still, small voice inside us that tells us to do this, or to go here, or to say that, perhaps not understanding that the voice of God is calling us to action.
God is a gentleman. He does not shout, nor does He demand. He whispers, He cajoles, He nudges.
And He smiles when we heed His desires, and do His will. For how else would anything ever get done?
In Jan de Hartog’s book, “The Peaceable Kingdom,” about the beginning of the Quaker movement in 1652, Margaret Fell has just came face-to-face with the horrors of children being imprisoned in the dungeons of Lancaster Castle. She has run to George Fox for comfort, and for answers.
“She wanted to assail him again, but he said, in the power of the Lord, ‘Stop crying for proof of God’s love! Prove it thyself!’ Then he added in a gentler tone, ‘How else dost thou think He can manifest His love? Through nature? Through the trees, the clouds, the beasts in the field, the stars? No, only through beings capable of doing so: ourselves. In the case of those children in the cage, about to be hanged, it is thou He touched. All He has to reach those children is thee!’
So, I invite you as much as I invite myself, when we hear that still, small voice of God, when we feel His nudges, or hear His whisper in our ears, to listen, and to act. For we are God’s instruments, His hands, His feet, and His love.
No comments:
Post a Comment