doctor's life support

1st June: Doctor, Be Still: The Voice of Stillness

'... and after the fire a still small voice. 1 Kings 19:12

Does life ever overwhelm you? So many things can happen -- good things, bad things, all kinds of things -- that they knock you flat. Do you wonder when they will stop -- when the tumult will cease? Can medicine never be the quiet life?

Elijah was one of the great men of God, but things got him down sometimes. When Jezebel put him on her death list he packed up completely. Rather paradoxically he asked God to let him die. God treated him gently and strengthened him. He wandered off, but was obviously still unhappy. He came to Horeb, the mount of God, took refuge in a cave and had another attack of the miseries, pouring out his heart to the Lord in a stream of self-pity.

This time God was not so gentle. Elijah really got the treatment: 'And behold the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake and, after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire...'

God was showing his power. Elijah apparently needed to be made aware of it. The demonstration must have been terrifying, but Elijah had to learn the hard way. The demonstration had, however, been made, and the message was getting through. Elijah was ready for something different, and something different came: 'after the fire a still small voice'. Another translation says: 'a voice of stillness'. And in the stillness he was again able to tell his troubles.

Somehow the atmosphere is now different. Perhaps in the stillness Elijah is now listening, really listening. God shows him the way ahead. Communication is restored. Confidence is restored.

The story is worth pondering. Sometimes we think we have had enough, whether it is sheer physical exhaustion, deadness of heart, discouragement, even a sense of spiritual abandonment. God may then treat us gently, and we at least pretend to take the healing with gratitude. But we may not be really listening. Self-pity can cause severe deafness. And God may have to give us the treatment, as he did to Elijah.

The experience can be rough and tough and tumultuous.

'Where is the god of love?' we then ask, unheeding of the fact that Love is shouting at us. When we are ready to listen, then -- only then -- comes the still small voice, the voice of stillness. And in the stillness God reaches us.

God, who was not in the earth when it was shaken,
Could not be found in fury of the flame,
Then to his seer, the faithful and forsaken,
Softly was manifest and spake by name.

F W H Meyer, St Paul.

Further reading: 1 Ki 19:1-21.

RRW