We find God in his still small voice.

Friday, 6/13/14

The first reading tell us the story of the Prophet Elijah hiding in a cave on Mount Horeb. He had been told to wait there unto the Lord came by.

There was a wind so strong that it shook the mountain, but Elijah’s gifts as God’s prophet convinced him that God was not in the fierce wind. After that, the mountain was shaken by an earthquake, and then by a fire; but Elijah’s gifts assured him that God’s advent would not be announced by high natural dramatics.

But, then, Elijah heard a “still small voice,” and he fell on his face, knowing that he was in God’s presence. The story is telling us not to look for God in million dollar television presentations, but rather in moments of quiet prayer.

Let me tell you about a little incident yesterday that had me feeling that I was in God’s presence. I was watching a white crane skim for several hundred yards just above the water, and it had me marveling at the great amount of energy he or she was expending. Asking myself about the source of that energy, I guessed that it came from the flesh of a fish he or she had consumed.   

Jokingly I told myself that the crane’s athletic display verified Einstein’s formula of  E=mc2. The crane’s innards were taking the energy locked in the molecular make-up of the fish he or she had scooped up, converting it into the feet of rapidly skimming the water.

All jokes aside, we can feel God’s workmanship in his invention of a DNA that is smoothly converted from mass to energy. It is his still small voice.

When I think of how God has devised this way of smoothly converting food into energy my favorite verse from Dante's Paradiso comes to mind. Arrived in Paradise, Dante asked Beatrice why things there  vaguely brought the wonders of our earth to mind. Beatrice replied:

"All things among themselves possess an order, 
  and this order is the form that makes the universe like God."