In the Whisper

We walk into the desert together, slow, silent. I steal small glances at the man beside me as we move with such draagging, heavy footsteps. I can feel his weariness settling all the way down to his bones, the disillusionment that’s seeped into his heart. The sun beats down on our heads, but he doesn’t seem to feel it. My throat is parched, and I haven’t traveled nearly as far as he has. He’s lost in his fight with God, unaware that I’m watching him argue in his head.

I want to rail at him.

Take his shoulders in mine and shake him for giving up now of all times.

He was just part of a miraculous show of God’s muscles. The world challenged his existence, and to answer that challenge Elijah simply turned to God and asked. And God came, in a blink, sleeves rolled up, answering. This prophet stood in front of a huge crowd, steadfast and sure of God’s presence – now only a day or two later, he’s running scared. Defeat is crammed into every crag and cranny of his old face. He’s afraid.

Now – after everything he’s been through – after facing a petulant king and hundreds of opposing prophets with a huge powerful God at his side – one envious, vindictive queen has him running for his life.

Doesn’t he know what a giant of faith he is?

Doesn’t he realize how many people beg on a daily basis for God to bare his muscles for them? I’ve studied this man my whole life, jealous of his stories, his crazy stunts, his fearless friendship with the God who shows up for him again and again in such obvious ways. How can he, of all people, be having this little temper tantrum? If I was him – if I had that instant access to God…

Elijah turns to look my way, and the grief in his eyes is so palpable my anger fizzles out. He is a man at the absolute end of his strength; his faith in tatters just like his cloak. Not because he no longer knows whether God is real.

No.

I realize as I stare at his face, at his shoulders bowed inwards that I’m not looking at a loss of faith in God’s existence. I’m looking at someone who’s tired of facing the endless indifference of his people.

Who thinks God’s existence doesn’t make a difference.

He’s spent too long being a lifeguard in the deep end of a pool of disbelief – trying to save countless bodies from drowning in disbelief and half truths – many of them going down hissing and spitting and cursing God, and Elijah’s starting to think they’re all going down no matter what he does. No matter how loud God speaks. No matter how big God looms in a cloud or a pillar of fire. He’s so tired of fighting to prove a God that’s good, a God that’s worth following.

Jesus is here, though Elijah doesn’t realize it. He gives me that look of his when he sees the conclusion I came to. That look of patience – that look of understanding and joy and grief all mixed together – the one he gives me whenever I’m convinced the darkness is bigger than he is. More infinite.

I swallow past the knot in my throat.

Because I understand exactly how Elijah feels and I can’t hide it from Jesus either. I get this idea sometimes that I’m letting him down, and I hate it – but I don’t know how to stop disillusionment from leaking into my faith. God’s so invisible sometimes. So hard to find.

But. I watched as Jesus, disguised and hidden, crouched down in front of this tired man at the beginning of this desert journey. He made Elijah food as he likes to do, instructed the angel to give him a drink, let him rest, urge him on. All of it done in that quiet way of his where he doesn’t explain himself, just cares for the ones he loves in the most simple way.

I wonder how many times he does that for me. When I can’t see or feel him.

The mountain looms close now. It’s the place where Moses first met with God and got those cool stone tablets. The ones with personally written instructions on how to keep going when everything seemed like it was falling apart. It’s a holy place to Elijah – maybe he can make God speak to him there like Moses did.

It’s funny how we always look for a place – a sacred spot where the world is thinner – as if God shows up in one spot more than another. I recently heard one of my favourites, Richard Rohr, talk about how all is sacred – because the whole Earth belongs to God. But we like to make these little spots extra holy. And pilgrimages always help us feel like we deserve a meeting once we get there.

We reach the mountain’s feet in silence. Elijah is quiet as we climb, but I can see his shoulders tense. I can sense the desperation he’s feeling. And the stubbornness in the set of his features makes my mouth twitch upwards in a half-grin of recognition – I can practically see his brain whirring up which argument will work best against God. I know it, I recognize it, because I do that too. He thinks God is going to tell him to go back, to try harder… that he can’t quit. He’s bracing himself to refuse. For the first time, ever. He’s just too worn out, too angry now and too disenchanted with the human species.

And besides, God let those power thirsty kings and queens kill thousands of other prophets. He didn’t stop the carnage – why would he spare Elijah?

As we reach a cave overlooking the valley I swallow, hard. That familiar longing is already filling up my chest. The one I always get when it seems like I’ve been in the desert for 40 days. The one that tells me I’m at the frayed end of what I can handle of the distance between Jesus and I – “the pit of despair” that I fall into now and then. The French “oubliette” – the prison of forgetting or being forgotten and abandoned.

In the cave it’s cold. And cramped. We pass the night shifting from one hard lump to the next, waiting. Impatiently. It feels like an eternity of doubt – a lifetime of arguing and “future-tripping” as Paul Young likes to call it. When Elijah blinks open his eyes, he can’t see Jesus, the Word, sitting there right beside him, where he’s been the whole night waiting for Elijah to let him in. But I can. A lump rises in my throat. Just like me, it took all night for Elijah to wrestle through his walls of self protection, to finally enter that quiet space at the end of arguments and listen.

“Why are you here, Elijah?” The Spirit asks him, using that quiet, inner voice that resounds through your whole being when you finally turn your head and let it in. It breaks me open as I feel it resound through my bones, my deepest sorrows and hidden fears.

Elijah squeezes his eyes closed. When he speaks, his voice is gravelly, cracking with the effort not to give in to all the emotions that rise to the surface at the question. God’s questions always seem to do that, make the trauma and pain pop out from the place we’ve shoved them. Expose the things that eat away at peace, at our ability to find him.

He looks across the cave, out at the night, not realizing he’s looking the Word of God, Jesus, in the eye, “I’ve served you faithfully my whole life.” His voice is full of accusation. “But after all that time, after all our efforts, your people have broken your altars. They’ve killed your prophets. I’m all that’s left and now they want me dead.”

Every word he says makes the knot in my throat a little tighter. He doesn’t say it straight out, but he blames God for letting it get the way it is. For not protecting the other prophets. For allowing it to go on and on and on. His soul is crying, “Where are you? Why have you abandoned me?”

I catch Jesus’s eyes as he looks at me. He sees all those questions in my eyes. The depth of my fear of being left forgotten. My utter weariness.

His body is still. Quiet.

How many times have I hurled the same sentiment at him? He’s not easy to follow, this God, this being who looks at Elijah with so much understanding. Who looks at me and sees all the way through me in a split second. He’s not very tame or predictable. At all. He’s not very good at explaining himself, either. Or rather – he doesn’t even try to defend himself. How do you argue with someone who doesn’t get defensive?

The Spirit plucks at Elijah. “Come.” She says, helping the old man to his feet, though Elijah doesn’t see anything. “Dad is about to pass by.”

As we move towards the mouth of the cave a wind howls, and we stop, huddling against the ground. It’s not just any wind – the hurricane force of it tears into the mountain, starting a landslide, making it impossible to hear anything but it’s unearthly, chilling, screaming.

Even inside the cave it’s pulling at us, plucking at our bodies, and my mind has a terrifying vision of being pulled all the way out. Tossed into the destruction of a tornado. I clutch the rock beneath me, my knees quaking in fear even though I’m supposed to know I’m safe.

So much power. Deadly and destructive.

I see Elijah’s eyes widen as he thinks to himself that this wind – this unfeeling, angry, out of control thing must be his God approaching, just as everyone else on this earth would assume.

He waits for a sign but none comes. Only a split second of silence passes. And then the ground begins to heave, and after it a fire roars past. I huddle as small as possible, wanting it to be over. Not feeling safe at all.

I start thinking – Imagine if this is how he always said hello? A hysterical giggle bubbles up – at the way us humans want him to be this.

In all these displays of uncontrollable power there is no sign of who Elijah came here to meet. There is nothing and no one to argue with. I wipe my eyes, looking over at him. He’s confused, afraid, wondering what he missed. I can see his brain starting to come to the conclusion that all this out of control nature means God’s angry with him – won’t speak to him at all. I know it’s how I feel. He must have passed by in the storm, in the wind, or quake or fire.

It gets quiet. We just sit there and try to breathe. Struggle to accept. Elijah’s already trying to force himself to surrender to this punishment, though it’s not a good feeling to surrender to all that faceless, nameless power. He’s distraught now; this isn’t how God normally speaks to him. With so much rage and wrath. With such alien strength. With so little regard for us small things.

And then it comes.

A soft whisper curling around his heart.

Sounding too, in the deepest parts of me, the ones where no one else can get to – sometimes not even me.

I don’t know what the whisper says to Elijah. That’s between Elijah and his dad. But I watch as tears slip out of Elijah’s eyes. He recognizes the sound of that whisper – the feel of it, as it brushes against his weary heart. As it soothes away the fear and separation that made him imagine God’s anger at him for fleeing. As the sound of that intimate voice banishes the lie that God is unapproachable. All Elijah’s heartsick exhaustion is met by such understanding, such knowing that he moves to the entrance of the cave, pulling his cloak over his head.

He weeps, his shoulders shaking as he gives in to the brokenness that brought him here, as he lets it all out for his God to see, the tearing grief, the despair. The exhaustion of facing so many, many angry and indifferent and hate-filled challenges. The disheartening crush of witnessing so much destruction and so much pain over and over again. I watch as that quiet, wordless whisper sweeps in and wraps Elijah in safety. Fills his heart with intimacy. Knows every nook and cranny of his soul with that absolute, iron-clad, steadfast love.

I always think I want a supernatural display of God’s power. Especially when things get tough and I have no control. I want to see it – his might – his force – even as I want to know I’m safe from it and it’s pointed elsewhere. Every Earth disaster has been attributed either to him or other gods throughout the ages. It’s like a broken record sometimes, the way us humans want God to do something extraordinary to prove himself, his existence. We want him to flex his muscles and fix everything in an instant. Dominate.

Force everything perfect.

Fear is loud in our lives. It might sometimes only hum through anxiety, but even then it’s a loud disruptive hum. We want him to match that sound, overcome it, or become it – towards our enemies.

I’m starting to recognize the intensity and the delicacy of his work in the silence, in the gentle moving within. His gaze seems often focused there – inside – hidden deep where he can do the most healing. Where he doesn’t destroy freedom or upset the balance of nature.

He prefers to speak in the quiet.

He knows that it’s there – in my heart –

in my soul – where my abandonment feels like the darkest, deepest cavern of an oubliette

– it’s there that I need him most – its there inside the vast emptiness that comes at my worst moments that if and when I let him enter, I can hear and hang onto his promise that he is with me. That he’ll never quit. That he will cradle me like a bruised reed against his heart. That he won’t let me be snuffed out like a tender wick.

I think He prefers to speak in the quiet.

In the whisper.