The God that we seek, is hard to find amidst the noise of public worship. The almighty doesn’t suddenly appear when we get alone, either. Spiritual seeking takes time. We must first accept the silence.

A good beginning is needed to carry you to the end. This is true of competitive things, stock car races and swimming. It is true of education, especially in mathematics and science. It is true of marriage and all intimate relationships. It is also true of ethics and our struggle to live as godly people. Ten commandments make a good start. Sincere believers are led from these ten commandments to the great simplification, stated by Jesus as, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul; and love your neighbor as yourself.”  Because I need things even simpler, I try to follow the mantra, “Always be compassionate.” But, I need to be careful here, the starting point, or good beginning, is to have no gods or idols before the one Holy God.

The small group I was leading got into a side conversation about the sad state of the world. One of the folk summed it up by saying that the last of the Ten Commandments — the one about not coveting — was the hardest, and that our failure to rid our politics, our workplaces, and our personal lives of coveting was ruining everything. To covet means to yearn to possess something that you don’t, or can’t legitimately, own. It is based on the word for greed. We all have something or someone that we covet. Spirituality involves discipling our illegitimate impulses. If we don’t begin by choosing to hold the Holy God above all other idols — oh, the things we think will give our life meaning! — we will gladly exchange a little bit of heavenly mindedness for a chance to acquire what we want today. 

I have always appreciated Psalm 90, even when I was young and thought the three score and ten endpoint for a standard life to be incredibly far away (Psalm 90:10 KJV). This is one of the few passages of the Bible that justifies keeping a King James Version on your computer. Read aloud, it is sonorous, and justifiably long because of its depth. It doesn’t deserve to be abbreviated by the lectionary or Powerpoint bound preachers, for it speaks to the big question; the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

How can my life have meaning? (and the related question, How can I stop sweating the small stuff?) By viewing it in the context of the eternal. In weekly worship our thoughts are made to return to the one who was before the mountains were born. We wrap our souls in His eternity. (insert blank powerpoint slide here and pause for thirty seconds).

The payoff for taking this psalm slow is found in the last verse, where we forsake lesser translations and find beauty and a firm foundation:
And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,
And establish the work of our hands for us;
Yes, establish the work of our hands. (90:17)

What we really want and find for the our joy of life, is having what we do matter. I don’t want fame or royalties from my writing, so much as, the sense that I have spoken the truth. That for those who read me, what I have written matters. In every occupation, and even in retirement, there is a quest for meaning.

Elijah on Sinai gets earthquake, wind, and fire. Sounds like the Weather Channel this spring. The prophet doesn’t find God on the Weather Channel, but in the soft, "sound of silence" that follows. It's like looking for the holy in the static that used to exist between the channels of our pre-HD TVs. We all tend to look for God is the traumatic. We expect God to do a miracle and prevent the Tsunami from hitting Japan. We expect the tornado to blow around the good churches of Oklahoma. We expect the fires to skip over the worshiping families of California and Colorado. God is not in the earthquake, wind, or fire.

Natural events, like terrifying illnesses, are not where God is as a direct cause (James 1:13-17). They are the random occurrences that mark our world’s fallen nature. They happen to good people, as well as, to the bad. They remind us of the heavenly debate that begins the book of Job. If God puts a hedge around his people and lets no fire or flood hurt them, then people will have faith for the wrong reason.