Cold set in fast this year. One day we were walking in the sun and the next there was cold and rain to deal with. The days are quickly getting shorter and darker. As the light fades with the passing of the seasons the quiet stillness of winter sets in around us.

It is in the midst of this cold and gloom that our God has chosen to come to us. We measure the winter solstice, the day when the darkness reaches its height before the light gradually begins to creep back on December 21st.

The stillness and the dark reminded me of the story of Elijah. Flying from the wrath of queen Jezebel, Elijah hid himself in a cave in the wilderness. He was consumed by his own darkness of fear and doubt and surrounded not only by the stillness of the wilderness but also the silence of God. The silence of God creates a winter in our souls just as the absence of light brings a chill across the land. It withers all that is green and living covering it with a frozen blanket that only light and warmth can lift.

Elijah found himself in that winter of the soul even as any of us do. His answer should instruct all of us. He took time to find the silence and waited for the voice of God. Elijah lived at a time when change was needed in his land, change that would not proceed naturally from the way things were. The rulers were corrupt and the people had fallen away from the worship of the true God. It required God's voice to speak in order for meaning to be restored.

Judea, two thousand years ago was also a time when change was needed. The Jewish people were once again a conquered people and the religious establishment was only heaping further burdens upon them instead of giving them the hope they so desperately needed. It was indeed a dark time, a time when people needed to hear from God.

People were seeking this word of God in a number of ways. The priests of the temple were calling them to
remember the old ways. The zealots and revolutionaries were calling them toward violence and open revolt and the
Romans were calling them to an enforced obedience that they called peace.

Yet God chose to speak through none of these things, not through the power of the Romans, the patriotism and zeal of the zealots, or the tradition of the priests of the temple who claimed to speak for God. The darkness gathered.

It was in the stillness, the stillness of a silent night that God finally chose to speak. Choosing none of the ways that we might expect God broke the silence with the birth cries of a newborn baby, another still small voice.

The Birth of Jesus is the turning point of our world, of the creation. He is God's word spoken into the cold and dark that surrounds us all. It is this new beginning that God has given all of us so that the changes that need to be made can be made and we will all finally be able to find our place in the kingdom of God.

Yet we need to seek the silence, to listen to God's voice if we are to be a part of the change that Jesus paid so highly to bring into being. We fill our lives around Christmas with all sorts of things. We fill them with music, the sounds of celebration, comfort and joy. We fill them with friends and relatives, being together and making merry. We fill our lives with food, feast after feast as we usher in the season. Yet like the wind, the earthquake and the fire, God is not in these things. We need to learn to seek the small things and the silence if we are to find God.

Leave time in your Christmas for silence. It was in the silence that Elijah heard the Lord. It was in the silence of that dark Bethlehem night that the sound of a baby's cry announced God's arrival in our world. And it will be in the silence this Christmas that our hearts will be able to meet our Lord as well. Make time for Christ this Christmas.

Pastor Jim Bliss

Contact Pastor Jim:
Email: jbliss@resluthdublin.org
Phone: (925) 828-1580.

Pastor's Notes Archive