A kid came back to church this week. I hadn’t seen him in over a year, since before he stopped showing up at all. He told me he’d gone down to Mexico for a while and just got back. Something about him was different. He actually wanted to talk about God this time, asked real questions instead of nodding along until it was over.
I keep turning over what actually changed in a year. It wasn’t an argument I made or anything anyone here said, since he wasn’t here to hear it. Whatever happened to him happened somewhere else, in the quiet part, not in this building.
I’ve been to Mexico myself, a few times, and there’s a slower rhythm to some of the places I visited that I don’t quite have words for. Fewer screens in your face. Less to fill the silence with. I’m not saying every town there is peaceful and every town here is loud, that’s too simple, and I don’t actually know the specifics of his year. But it got me wondering whether it wasn’t Mexico exactly that did something in him. It might have just been the absence of everything he usually fills his life with.
Elijah heard God at Horeb, but not in the wind that tore the mountain apart, not in the earthquake, not in the fire. After all of that had passed, there was a still, small voice, and that is where God actually was. He did not skip the loud things because they weren’t impressive enough. He simply was not in them. The voice came in whatever is left over once everything loud has finished happening.
I don’t think the answer is that everyone needs a plane ticket. I think the real question is whether I’ve built any of that thin silence into my own days, or whether I’ve filled every inch of it the way I usually do, and then wondered why I can’t hear anything. That kid didn’t get quiet on purpose. It just happened to him. I’m not sure I’ve ever done it on purpose either.