The Still, Small Voices

It used to be that Sojourners Community rented a huge, four-story house on Euclid Street NW. Seventeen of us once lived there. One of our favorite days of the year was the Fourth of July.

Our neighbors knew we weren't exactly the flag-waving type, but they also knew that Independence Day brought us all out on the roof. Some of them joined us. And there, just after dusk, no matter which direction you turned, you saw fireworks.

For starters, there was the big show down on Washington, D.C.'s mall. If you rotated to the southwest, you could catch the explosive display from the Virginia suburbs. Turn north and you caught the rockets' red (and blue and green and white) glare from Maryland. We oohed and ahhed at fireworks in the round. The children were particularly appreciative.

I savored that memory in a later year when the Fourth rolled around. I was enjoying small-town fireworks on my own, sitting on a grassy bank just a few yards from the point of their projection.

From up close, there was the anticipation of watching a flare shoot into the air and then waiting to see what colors would explode across the black sky. Some flashed and sparkled; some showered light in crisscross patterns; some swiveled brightly on their whistling paths toward the stars.

The effect was loud from that distance. Some of the fireworks crackled with several explosions at once. Children covered their ears. The colors were still red, blue, green, and white (I suppose that orange and purple have yet to be perfected). It was all over in a matter of minutes.

PEOPLE QUICKLY packed up their quilts and folding chairs, scooped up the children, and headed for their cars. It was suddenly very quiet, and a bit lonely. And in that first moment of stillness, something even more spectacular climbed above the trees into the sky.

It was the largest, orange-est full moon I had ever seen. The shadows on its face were a shimmering light violet. I oohed and ahhed to myself and whispered to the breeze, "God can do orange and purple."

I thought of the biblical Elijah, hiding in a cave, trying to flee from his troubles and his loneliness and his fear. And there came up a wind so strong it split mountains and broke rocks. But God was not in the wind. Following the wind was an earthquake. But God was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire. But God was not in the fire. "And after the fire a sound of sheer silence"--and then the "still, small voice" (1 Kings 19:12).

I laughed to myself as I thought, God knows how to get my attention.

It wasn't always so. I used to look for God mostly in the dramatic, the explosive, the loud and flashy--in the earth-shaking events. Surely God has the power to insert the Spirit into history and shake things up any way God chooses. And occasionally there are the breathtaking revolutions. But not very often.

Mostly God works through the still, small voices: the persistent practitioners of peace, the teachers of justice, the servants of compassion--the quiet witnesses who try to live as Christ would have them live. There have been many of them in my life to light up the way.

That night on the grassy bank, I regretted the times I have not been appreciative. I thanked God for the solid faith of these companions on the journey, past and present. They don't choose to light up the sky with flash and fanfare. They simply appear day after day, predictably, to reflect the light of God.

Just the reminder of them took away my loneliness that night. And I smiled as the moon drew closer to heaven, growing ever brighter on the climb.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.