TRPC Broadcast Email – Thursday 26, 2020

It’s very surreal for me sitting in my study watching the empty church across the road. I have the perfect view of the north side of the building. The side where Jerry starts each day as the first one in the church, and not just on Sundays, but most days of the week. This side of the church, I watch flowers brought in and flowers that gave their best for Sunday worship carried out. Often, I will notice the cars that use this side of the church as an exit, having visited the church office or community building. But lately, all is quiet on the northern front. Usually there would be cars trading places as driver and passenger switch sides and then drive off. Often, I am distracted as distracted drivers pull in our lot to conduct business, safely texting and talking in their cars. But lately, there is little action to pull my attention from my computer screen. I miss the diversion. Those moments in life when you let your mind wander.

And as my mind wanders, my soul wonders. Where is God in all this silence. My mind reaches back to some dusty corner long forgotten and stumbling back with a quote from Rumi “Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.” [1] Elijah met our God of silence. In 1 Kings 19, Elijah experienced a great wind, but God was not in the wind; an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake; a fire, but God was not in the fire. Finally, Elijah heard, “the sound of sheer silence.” We usually carry so much inside of ourselves: winds of thoughts, seismos [2] of emotions, fires of passion. Distracted so much, we can’t hear the silent language of God, as well as of our own soul until we “calm down”. Which is not easy. Many in the Bible went through their seismos [3] events and yet God safely brought his faithful out of the storms.

The best example is “When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the seismon [4] and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:54) And still, three days later our forever-faithful God brought his own Son out of the cave. And as he did, he pulled the world out of our storm of doubt and despair. And God will do the same for us today. He will see us through this seismos, this virus event that exiled us from our normal lives into one of isolation. This event for us is something unprecedented and yet it is in the providence of God. His purpose for us now is to demonstrate our faith and their trust in the Lord, enjoying the peace that surpasses all understanding and to wait and see how all these events allow the gospel to advance. We cannot know what tomorrow will bring, but we can say with confidence that whatever it brings, God will be with us, and we will be with one another, and in that promise, we will find hope.

Blessings of Peace, Joy, Love and (of course) Hope,

Pastor Patrick

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[1] Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet, Islamic scholar, and theologian.

[1] a shaking (as an earthquake); a storm.

[1] Ibid

[1] Ibid.