Crickets

So all of a sudden I realize, it's been a while since I blogged. As a matter of fact, I posted two weeks and since then? Crickets.

In case you're confused, crickets is a popular term for silence in response to something. For example, somebody tells a really bad joke, and everybody just sits and stares ... crickets.

So along this line of thinking, it seems to me that this is the way a lot people see God. I pray, I go to church, etc. but then ... crickets.

And sometimes they're right. But I was also reminded of a "cricket" analogy by Max Lucado in his book, "In the Grip of Grace." He writes of seeing a cricket in church as he was taking communion, then imagines life from the cricket's point of view:


Perhaps the best question is, who does a cricket worship? Does he acknowlege that there was a hand behind the building? Or does he choose to worship the building itself? Or perhaps a place in the building? Does he assume that since he has never seen the builder, there was no builder?

Sometimes all we get is evidence of God in the things he created, but nothing else ... crickets. And sometimes so it goes for long periods of time. But eventually, like the cricket interrupting communion, we suddenly run into the Creator, and he's bigger than anything we've ever seen, sometimes more quiet, too.

Consider the story of Elijah in I Kings 19. Elijah ran for 40 days and 40 nights so he could hole up in a cave. When God asked him what he was doing, he said, "I'm the only one left, and they're trying to kill me, too."

Probably muttering under his breath and shaking his head, God said, "Go stand on the mountain, the presence of the Lord will pass by."

First came a great and powerful win that shattered rocks, but no presence of the Lord ... crickets.

Second came an earthquake, but no presence of the Lord ... crickets.

Third came a fire, but no presence of the Lord ... crickets.

Finally came what the King James Version calls a still, small voice or what the NIV calls a gentle whisper. It was the Lord.

The point is sometimes we're looking for the miraculous, the incredible, unbelievable, earth-shattering response when what we really ought to be listening for is ... crickets.