Advent Devotions

Today’s author is Intentional Interim Pastor, Steve Sylvester.

1 Kings 19:1-18

My third year in seminary as spent on internship in New York City.  The church I served as “vicar” was Trinity Lutheran Church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, twenty blocks south of Harlem on 100^th and Amsterdam.  Like most of the churches in the area, the people of Holy Trinity had ministries with neighborhood children, especially in the summer.  One of the things we did in partnership with other Lutheran churches in New York, was send kids upstate to summer camp at Camp Koinonia.

My internship went from September through May, so I didn’t get to go to Camp Koinonia with the kids, but I heard plenty of stories from them.  I don’t remember how it came up, but one time we were talking about what most unsettled them about being up there.  I expected they would talk about paddling a canoe for the first time or something like that, but everyone agreed that the two things that most frightened them were darkness and silence, because in the city they had never experienced either.

I think about those kids in New York every time I read yesterday’s passage from 1 Kings.  Elijah felt God’s presence in absence.  God was not in the wind, not in the earthquake or the fire, but in the sound of sheer silence.  Those who argue that silence has no sound have, in my opinion, never experienced it.  Silence, utter silence, is deafening.  Darkness is the same.  Darkness is not really a “thing.”  It’s the absence of light.  But for something that doesn’t really exist, darkness is a palpable presence.

One of the things we did in worship yesterday was look at the names suspended above us as we called to mind our loved ones who have died inn the Lord and who await us in the world to come.  Our son Sam, whose funeral was at Prince of Peace on June 5, 2023, had his name up there with the rest.  When Jennifer and I talk to friends and family about Sam, we often note how present he is to us in his absence, and that brings both pain and joy.  It’s not that we are just carrying him in our hearts.  It’s that he is actually with us, but just beyond what we can hear and see.

I know many of you also hear sound in the silence.  I know you see in the darkness what some would say is not there.  Along with you, I am thankful for those things.  I am thankful that God’s promise of new life and reconnection is so “there,” so “present” even now that we swear we can hear it, see it.  I keep you in my prayers as you remember.  I hold you in my heart in those times of silence and darkness.  God’s promise of resurrection is real and true.