I enjoy the music of Simon and Garfunkel. The Sound of Silence was the song that brought them together. Paul Simon wrote the song when he was 21 years old. The two performed the song for the management of Columbia Records and they were offered a record contract.
The song is a bit mysterious. It starts, “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again.” As the song repeats the phrase “the sound of silence” it tells us that silence has a sound. We might miss it. Like the people described in the lyrics who are “hearing without listening”. Like them we might not dare “disturb the sound of silence.” Our attention might be captivated by something else like those who “bowed and prayed to the neon god they made.” All that refusal to listen doesn’t change the fact that silence has a sound. God has something to share with us when we get quiet enough to listen.
We are going to journey into silence though the experience of Elijah in 1 Kings 19. I know, we already know the punchline. God wasn’t in the wind or the earthquake or the fire he was in the still small voice.
Act 1: The Onslaught of Noise (This is part 1. Look for Act 2 and 3 in part 2)
An onslaught is an especially violent attack. Elijah’s important mission was threatened by an onslaught of noise, some external and audible, most of it internal and emotional.
Judah was led by king Asa who was near the end of his 41 year reign. He did right in the eyes of the Lord (1 Kings 15:10-11). By contrast, Israel was led by a series of evil kings with much shorter reigns. Omri did more evil than all the kings before him (16:25) and his son Ahab outdid him in evil (16:30). Elijah first appears in the Biblical narrative in 1 Kings 17:1. Here he is confronting Ahab, worst of the worst, with the words “there shall be neither dew nor rain except at my word.”
This was a bold statement because Ahab had given himself to the worship of Baal. He married Jezebel, who was named after the false god. Her father was the king of, Baal worshipping, Sidon. His name was Ehtbaal, which means, with Baal. They believed Baal was a god of fertility, associated with agriculture. He was the one who sent the rain and the dew. One of the names they had for him literally translates to “the lord of the rain and the dew”. Elijah picked a fight with the king to prove what his name means, “the Lord is God”[i].
This made life difficult for Elijah. He had to hide. He was directed to a brook where he was fed by ravens. When that ran out he want to a widow who didn’t have enough to share but when she did share, the flour never ran out and the oil never ran dry. Her son died. And Elijah, by the power of God, raised him back to life. These were some major emotional experiences. Can you hear the noise? There was stress, uncertainty, scarcity, tragedy, joy.
Elijah lived liked like this for three years. Then God said to him, “go show yourself to Ahab” (18:1). More internal noise. That would be terrifying. Jezebel had been massacring the prophets of God (18:13). Ahab had been on a violent man hunt for Elijah in every nation (18:10). He wasn’t told the plan, just appear before the man who wants to kill you. He did it. Then he challenged Ahab to the Mt. Carmel showdown. There was noise on Mount Carmel. External and internal. If God didn’t answer by fire, Elijah would be killed. The 450 prophets of Baal cried out to the god. God won. Elijah had the task of destroying the 450 prophets. That would have been emotionally heavy, noisy.
Then Elijah told Abah to hurry back home, it was about to rain. Elijah ran ahead of the chariots. Apparently, he had more work of reform to do. But his plans were abandoned when he received a message from Jezabel saying, “So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” That’s when Elijah ran for his life(19:2-3). He had just sprinted 25 miles. The noise motivated him to run another 100 miles in a different direction. To escape the noise, he went south to Beersheba, the edge of the wilderness. Can you hear it? He hears his heart racing and his heavy breathing. He hears Jezebels threats. He hears the shouts of the prophets of Baal. He hears the noise of conflict, hiding, success, power, exhaustion, and being alone. Elijah ran because the onslaught of noise was too much for him. It’s too much for us!
Today the volume is turned up higher than ever before. It is too much for us.
Elijah’s experience was more intense than anything I have experienced. But just imagine what it would it have been like if Elijah had an iPhone? If, on top off all the noise of his experience, he had modern media technology firing messages at him. Some of the tech would have been a plug. If Elijah had a Fitbit he would have been crushing it on steps. Most of it just noise. He might have been come obsessive about his weather app (Still zero percent chance of rain?). He could read every one of Jezebel’s threatening tweets. He could watch the news broadcast of Ahab’s manhunt. His social media and inbox would be filled with hate mail ever since he pronounced that drought. He would have what we call compassion fatigue as he watched the reports of all the suffering caused by the drought, and then the guilt. During his three years in hiding, he could have been pulled off mission while binge watching shows, browsing social media or playing video games. When he stood on Mt. Carmel trying to direct all his energies toward God he would have had the distraction of something vibrating in his pocket. Or maybe he never would have made it to Mt. Carmel. Maybe the noise would have been so loud that he wouldn’t have heard the voice of God telling him to “go to Ahab”.
Remember Y2K when computers were going to mess everything up. Technology has not caused the world to blow up, but it has caused noise to blow up. In the year 2000 there were zero podcasts, zero smartphones, zero streaming services, zero apps, zero Facebook accounts, zero Instagram posts, and zero YouTube videos. That is a lot of noise!
You might not be into all that technology. You spend your time gardening with the sounds of nature. When you listen to music, you choose classical. You have never texted while driving. Maybe you never even text while not driving. If this is you, you probably don’t suffer from tech related noise overload. But there is still an onslaught of noise. There is the stress of health, relationships, politics, and works. There is conflict, success, failure, exhaustion, tragedy, and joy. There is an enemy, who prowls like a roaring, noisy lion, who seeks to leverage that noise to keep us from the silence where we might meet with God.
The noise traps us in some sneaky ways.
The Double Zoom Trap
Believing that we can actually take in all the noise is a trap. I once had two Zoom meetings at the same time. Warning, this story is a confession that exposes my ridiculousness. I know there are others out there. So, I attempted to engage in both meetings. I pulled up one my phone and the other on my computer. To cut the audio interference, I plugged in one set of headphones to my phone and another to the computer. Then I put one meeting in my right ear the other in my left. That will mess with your brain. It is a trap. We can’t take in all the noise. We much choose what noise we will listen to and what noise we will turn down (or turn off).
The Baby Shark Trap
Meaningless, unhelpful, unnecessary noise is a trap. No, it is not evil noise. It is just extra noise. There are 120 billion videos on YouTube and 200K new videos uploaded each day. Some of this is educational, some inspirational, some entertaining. A lot of it is just noise. Here is the perfect example. The most viewed YouTube video of all-time currently has 8.9 Billion views. Any guesses what it is called? Baby Shark Dance[ii]. Yeah, it’s just noise. It’s irritating noise. It’s unnecessary noise. The trap is that we fill our ears with this noise as if we need it, and the unnecessary noise downs out the necessary.
The White Noise Trap
Covering noise with more noise is a trap. We use a white noise machine to help my kids sleep at night. The brand is Dohm. On the top is days, “the original sound conditioner”. The brand goes back to 1962 when J.K. Buckwalter produced the SleepMate. He marketed it as the “sleep-inducing sound-producing device”. Catchy. He claimed it would “cover up all those nerve-wracking noises with a breezy continuing SWOOSH.”[iii] It works for getting the kids to sleep. It doesn’t work in life. We can’t cover the noise with more noise. Instead, we actually must turn the noise down. We fall into this trap by treating our emptiness, loneliness, depression, burnout… with additional noise. It might be entertaining noise, distracting noise, or soothing noise. But more noise is not the solution. It only pushes us further from the solution, being with God in the quiet.
The Reach for the Phone Trap
Filling in every quiet moment with noise is a trap. Microsoft did an attention span study, the one that reported that our attention span have dropped below the nine second attention span of a goldfish. They also found that 77% of young adults agreed with the statement “when nothing is occupying my attention the first thing I do is reach for my phone.”[iv] The noise is overwhelming because we have filled every dead space. We have eliminated boredom from our lives by filling up every space with noise. But, in doing so, we have also eliminated reflection, silence, and emotional depth.
Life is noisy! Turn it down! Tune in to the silence where God will meet you.
In all who are under the training of God is to be revealed a life that is not in harmony with the world, its customs, or its practices; and everyone needs to have a personal experience in obtaining a knowledge of the will of God. We must individually hear Him speaking to the heart. When every other voice is hushed, and in quietness we wait before Him, the silence of the soul makes more distinct the voice of God. He bids us, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10. Here alone can true rest be found. And this is the effectual preparation for all who labor for God. Amid the hurrying throng, and the strain of life’s intense activities, the soul that is thus refreshed will be surrounded with an atmosphere of light and peace. The life will breathe out fragrance, and will reveal a divine power that will reach men’s hearts.
Desire of Ages Page 363
[i] www.britannica.com/topic/Baal-ancient-deity
[ii] www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w
[iii] White Noise Evolution: From Sleepmate to Dohm – Yogasleep
[iv] https://dl.motamem.org/microsoft-attention-spans-research-report.pdf