Where is God?

   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.   I Kings 19:11-13

My Dad experienced an earthquake this week - he wiped out on his bike and broke his right foot.  He is home now and doing fine, popping pain pills in his easy chair with his still-swollen toes sticking out of the top of his cast.  He now has a steel plate, a few screws and a lag bolt in there, holding it all together.  It means he'll be hobbling around home with a walker for quite some time, and he can't drive either.  Not so fun. 

Someone on the worship team read out this scripture this morning, and as I listened I suddenly thought: when we experience a huge storm/earthquake/fire in our life, just like Elijah; that's where we look for God.  We look in the cancer, or the accident, or the tumour, or the divorce, or whatever. We ask "God why?  Where are you?  How did you miss this?  Why did you do this?

But he isn't in the cancer, or the accident, or whatever disaster has befallen us.  He's in the gentle whisper that follows; maybe when we are alone and wide awake in the middle of the night, or sitting in a waiting room somewhere by ourselves, or driving somewhere where we don't want to go...anywhere quiet enough to hear a gentle whisper I suppose. 

   Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”  

And then (you can read the whole story in 1 Kings 19) Elijah was honest with God.  And God listened, encouraged him, and told him what to do next.  It's a great story of a saint of a man hitting a very low point in his life.

God was not in the storm, the earthquake or the fire...