Yesterday, I took my four children to the cinema on my own.
Not wise.
Especially as the film was questionable and due to the fact that I had looked at the start time so hurriedly, we got there a full 20 minutes EARLY! Keeping a two year old, two 6 year olds and a 7 year old amused in the silent dark for that long wasn’t easy. Or fun. Or easy. Did it say that before?

Still, it was an experience. Mainly because there was something wrong with the screen sound.

For the first 10 minutes (the duration of nearly all the trailers) there was no sound whatsoever. I don’t know what was wrong, and it was eventually rectified, but it was a strange sensation to be in a totally silent cinema watching epic previews without any noise – save for my children asking if they had gone temporarily deaf.

The silence made me think about how much we miss when we are not tuned in to God properly in prayer. Often we can think we are seeing what God is doing… but if we miss what He is SAYING, the sounds of heaven, we may as well be blind as deaf.

There is a beautiful story in 1 Kings 19 that I love. Elijah has taken refuge in a cave on Mount Horeb, the same mountain, elsewhere called Mount Sinai, where Moses received the tablets of the Law. So this is HOLY GROUND in a big way. Told to come before God on such sacred territory, the prophet takes his life in his hands as the Lord “passes by.” We read,

1 The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

In this hugely famous sequence of wind, earthquake and fire, the noise of God’s presence is utterly overwhelming; but it is only with the stunning quiet of the “gentle whisper” that the Lord actually speaks to Elijah. The voice tells him to anoint Elisha as his successor and as prophet of the Lord. This is a voice he could have missed entirely.

God is not always in the loud things. He is not always in the conferences and the big services. He is sometimes in the trees blowing and the fragile feather falling to the ground.

Elisha may not have been an obvious candidate for the job. Coming down from the mountain, Elijah finds his successor working behind 12 yoke of oxen, plowing his family’s field. He was not leading worship or preaching, nor was he bowing down low in a temporary temple somewhere. He was in a muddy field with 12 animals. I’m guessing dirty, hot and sweaty.

I perhaps would not have thought he was the right guy.
But Elijah had been there when God passed by and when He spoke, albeit in a tiny voice. Elijah, remember, is a man who has been on the run from the frightening Ahab and Jezebel, who has been fed by ravens and impecunious widows. So perhaps his understanding of God is rather different to mine.

I mean, I have never been in a situation where I am running for my life and relying on garden birds for my tea. And I suspect you would fall into the same category.

When Elijah finds Elisha, instead of speaking, Elijah takes off his cloak and places it on the no-doubt trembling shoulders of the astonished Elisha, signaling that this “son of Shapat” had a new father and a new destiny.

Silence really can be golden.
Let’s not miss the still, small voice of God’s whisper today.

(The beautiful Japanese writing in the inset picture above means “Quiet Cloud”)