whispers

I have a question: what is it that God is doing when one of his own is seeking him, but cannot seem to find him? Why is he sometimes silent?

I asked this question to a friend recently and the response I got frustrated me. It was the standard church response, textbook to the core. He told me that perhaps I was not seeking God the right way. Maybe my devotion wasn’t true enough. Maybe I haven’t waited long enough. Maybe I’m not giving enough money. (Yep, he actually said that.) Maybe there’s sin in my life blinding me to God’s response.

While I will grant you that there are many things I could do or fail to do that would get in the way of my communication with God, ultimately, between the two of us, my relationship with God is far more dependant on his action than on mine. What I mean is this: if I seek God to the best of my feeble ability, sincerely, genuinely searching him out in my brokenness, I may or may not find him immediately. Whether or not I find him depends chiefly on whether or not he reveals himself to me.

I’ll say again, yes, there are a great many things I can do to position myself to hear God and it is essential that I seek him; however, I’ll only find him when he shows himself to me.

For reasons I don’t understand, sometimes God chooses to remain hidden. Sometimes he allows mystery to persist. Sometimes I desperately want to feel his arms around me, holding me, hugging me, reminding me that he’s here and that he loves me and all I get is the still small whisper that Elijah heard. And honestly, it sounds like the breeze. In fact, it might be the breeze, but my faith prompts me to believe that it’s not the breeze, not some incidental coincidence, but instead the still small voice of God. And I believe that it is.

Much like Elijah, though, I feel like I’m hiding out, like the queen’s forces are stalking me and trying to kill me. I feel like I’m on the run, but I don’t know where to run to. Like Elijah, I feel like whining to God about my faithfulness and the unfairness of my current situation. And, like Elijah, God reveals himself to me, not in spectacular displays of his power (which just so happen to change my situation in wonderful, marvelous ways), but in quiet whispers, whispers I barely hear though I’m straining to discern any message from him.

This is, mysteriously, God’s way. The one true divine voice, the voice that spoke the universe into being, would rather whisper than shout. Even when I’m shouting, demanding to hear something from him.