Lamentations
March 20, 2011
1 Kings 19.6-16
What do you notice in this story?
This story should confound us in the same way it confounds Elijah. After all, he heads off to the mountains for 40 days immediately after he has shown up the prophets of Baal, the servants of King Ahab, by calling down fire from heaven in a grand and over-the-top display of God’s power. If you recall, Elijah has a sacrificial bull placed on an alter to be burned, and after the prophets of Baal cannot get their god to light it up, Elijah has jugs of water poured over the wood to make it all the more difficult to ignite. Then, in a flash of lightning from heaven, Elijah’s God grills the bull.
Needless to say, Ahab is a bit put out that his prophets have been shown up – not to mention shown the sword by Elijah – and Ahab swears that vengeance will be his by the next day.
Elijah heads for the hills, running for his life.
Given that the roaring flames had been the way God worked just a few days earlier, it seems natural enough to Elijah that he might hear God in the fire, if not in the mighty wind or the shaking earth.
But that’s not how God chooses to speak to Elijah.
Instead, in a still, small voice – the sound of sheer silence, the text puts it – God speaks.
Not only is the voice unexpected, but also the message. God basically says, “what’s up with this 40 days on the mountain business? I want you back down in the city. Yes, the very place where your words so upset the apple cart of business as usual that the king wants you dead. That is where I want you to speak my word.”
As we consider our own lamentations today – whether for personal situations of pain and suffering or for the overwhelming suffering in the wider world – can we hear the still, small voice of God speaking in and through our own tears? Can we discern in that voice both the presence of God in the midst of brokenness, and the calling of God to us to be also present to one another in the midst of brokenness?
These are, to me, fundamental questions of these 40 days. Our journey of Lent – the journey to Jerusalem and the cross – is a journey into the broken heart of God.
Ellery Akers is a California.
The Word That Is a Prayer
One thing you know when you say it:
all over the earth people are saying it with you;
a child blurting it out as the seizures take her,
a woman reciting it on a cot in a hospital.
What if you take a cab through the Tenderloin:
at a street light, a man in a wool cap,
yarn unraveling across his face, knocks at the window;
he says, Please.
By the time you hear what he’s saying,
the light changes, the cab pulls away,
and you don’t go back, though you know
someone just prayed to you the way you pray.
Please: a word so short
it could get lost in the air
as it floats up to God like the feather it is,
knocking and knocking, and finally
falling back to earth as rain,
as pellets of ice, soaking a black branch,
collecting in drains, leaching into the ground,
and you walk in that weather every day.
1 Kings 19.6-16
What do you notice in this story?
This story should confound us in the same way it confounds Elijah. After all, he heads off to the mountains for 40 days immediately after he has shown up the prophets of Baal, the servants of King Ahab, by calling down fire from heaven in a grand and over-the-top display of God’s power. If you recall, Elijah has a sacrificial bull placed on an alter to be burned, and after the prophets of Baal cannot get their god to light it up, Elijah has jugs of water poured over the wood to make it all the more difficult to ignite. Then, in a flash of lightning from heaven, Elijah’s God grills the bull.
Needless to say, Ahab is a bit put out that his prophets have been shown up – not to mention shown the sword by Elijah – and Ahab swears that vengeance will be his by the next day.
Elijah heads for the hills, running for his life.
Given that the roaring flames had been the way God worked just a few days earlier, it seems natural enough to Elijah that he might hear God in the fire, if not in the mighty wind or the shaking earth.
But that’s not how God chooses to speak to Elijah.
Instead, in a still, small voice – the sound of sheer silence, the text puts it – God speaks.
Not only is the voice unexpected, but also the message. God basically says, “what’s up with this 40 days on the mountain business? I want you back down in the city. Yes, the very place where your words so upset the apple cart of business as usual that the king wants you dead. That is where I want you to speak my word.”
As we consider our own lamentations today – whether for personal situations of pain and suffering or for the overwhelming suffering in the wider world – can we hear the still, small voice of God speaking in and through our own tears? Can we discern in that voice both the presence of God in the midst of brokenness, and the calling of God to us to be also present to one another in the midst of brokenness?
These are, to me, fundamental questions of these 40 days. Our journey of Lent – the journey to Jerusalem and the cross – is a journey into the broken heart of God.
Ellery Akers is a California.
The Word That Is a Prayer
One thing you know when you say it:
all over the earth people are saying it with you;
a child blurting it out as the seizures take her,
a woman reciting it on a cot in a hospital.
What if you take a cab through the Tenderloin:
at a street light, a man in a wool cap,
yarn unraveling across his face, knocks at the window;
he says, Please.
By the time you hear what he’s saying,
the light changes, the cab pulls away,
and you don’t go back, though you know
someone just prayed to you the way you pray.
Please: a word so short
it could get lost in the air
as it floats up to God like the feather it is,
knocking and knocking, and finally
falling back to earth as rain,
as pellets of ice, soaking a black branch,
collecting in drains, leaching into the ground,
and you walk in that weather every day.
posted by David Ensign at
1:01 PM
<< Home