April 1 – Near

In the third chapter of Genesis there is a story about God walking in the garden in the cool of the evening. Adam and Eve hear God and they hide themselves, because they have recently discovered they are naked. This story suggests an intimacy, a nearness, with God that goes beyond anything we ever have or will experience. Just hanging out together in the garden – that is, until they got booted out.

Paradise lost, intimacy gone. After that, access to God has been severely limited. 

Abraham, sometime later, had the occasion to walk and talk with God, negotiating the fate of Sodom with the Lord. Or was it the Lord’s angels? Or just three men? Actually, the text is pretty unclear about this, so maybe it wasn’t totally clear to Abraham, either, who he was talking to.

Angels do seem to stand in for God occasionally. Such as the night Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, wrestled with an angel; it was probably because God was a little vexed with Jacob. He was a handful of a man, wasn’t he? Always thinking he could get a little more – more birthright, more wives, more goats. Then he wanted God’s name, which is power over God. There weren’t a lot of intimate encounters with God after that. 

But, of course, an encounter with God is a pretty subjective experience, isn’t it? I have been reading a book by biblical scholar, James Kugel, in which he proposes that the main difference between the ways early and later biblical characters described their experiences of God has to do with an evolution of human perception. He argues it’s because our brains used to be less divided, more permeable between alert and dreamlike states. More open to experiences of the supernatural.

Later biblical characters became more like us – although still more open to otherworldly experiences and more willing to interpret them as God experiences. One of my favorite God-encounters in scripture is the story of Elijah hiding in a cave. 

He is on the run from Jezebel and Ahab, who have promised to kill him. On his escape journey he collapses I exhaustion and fear. He felt so alone. He wanted to die.

Then an angel of God touched him, the story says, woke him, and urged him to eat. This happened more than once. Elijah felt the presence of God’s angels with him, giving him sustenance for this journey.

He final reaches Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. He shelters in a cave, and there he receives a word from God. Go outside because the Lord will be passing by.

Then, we are told, there is a great wind. But the Lord is not in the wind. After the wind, there is an earthquake, but the Lord is not in the earthquake. Then a fire, but the Lord is not in the fire.

Elijah remained in the cave through all this. And then, suddenly, there is a sound of sheer silence.

In Hebrew, it is literally “a thin silence.” This is something I have pondered for years. What is a thin silence? Is it thin in the same way we talk about thin places, spots on earth where heaven seems to break through? Does it suggest a thinness in the atmosphere? What could it mean?

At any rate, Elijah seems to know what it is – God. And he wraps himself up, covering his face, and goes out to meet the deity.

There followed a conversation about a number of things, but the real significance to me is what happened before the conversation:

Where is God that day on the mount? Not in the giant, magnificent, awesome destructiveness. God is in the stillness.

God is approachable. Inviting. In the quiet, Elijah will come near. In the quiet, God is near.

I think that is still true.

Photo: Nikki and Megan, two good friends who enjoy being near each other.