Finding God Beneath the Tumult
In today’s media climate, the noise can be unbearable. Newscasters shout to their cameras about wars, earthquakes, fires, and storms. Commercials are set to a higher average volume than the shows they are meant to serve. Music blares so loudly during sports broadcasts that it is hard to hear the professional commentators. Panelists on news shows scream over each other to make their voices and their points of view heard. Politicians yell at reporters who ask them questions they don’t like.
The noise isn’t just audible. It also finds us in the written word. Some of us subscribe to online publications. Some of those publications send us daily emails with headlines from stories they are covering. Some send us emails more than once a day. Click the headlines and you’ll find the stories, some short and some long, on any number of topics. The information stream is constant, and the volume of data it presents to us can be staggering.
Many of us also navigate social media. Users of platforms like Instagram and TikTok can feast on a rapidly moving stream of posts and videos presented through addictive algorithms. Those algorithms are meant to keep us glued to our phones and our computers, deluged by a flood of snippets and memes that command our attention.
Surely some of the material that bombards us has value, but much of it is designed to capture our attention by causing us alarm or provoking fear and anger. Even the valuable communications can be too much of a good thing, overburdening our limited capacity for receiving and comprehending information and distracting us from our immediate surroundings, our companions, and ourselves. Amidst all the noise, where is God?
The Lectionary recently presented us with a reading from the first Book of Kings. In it, God told the prophet Elijah to come out of the cave where he had found shelter and stand on the mountain to see the Lord passing by. When Elijah did so, he saw a strong and heavy wind, an earthquake, and a fire. The reading tells us that God was not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire. Rather, after the fire, there was “a tiny whispering sound,” or as the King James Version describes it, “a still small voice.” It was then that Elijah heard the voice of God.
In this loud and stressed-out world, God speaks to us in the silence. Especially in these times when televisions, streaming services, internet platforms, phone apps, and emails bombard us with wide‑ranging and often disturbing words and images, we sometimes need to escape the noises that would drown out that one true voice. Rather than turn up the volume or try to keep up with the deluge of information presented to us, sometimes we would be better off entering a quiet space where we can listen for that whispering sound, that still small voice of God that speaks to us beneath the din. Rather than contribute to the clamor through our own raised voices, more often we would do well to lower our own voices and address the world and the people around us in a calming and peaceful manner, in the hushed reverence of a whispering Lord.
Don Frederico is a writer and retired lawyer living in Mashpee, Massachusetts, where he serves as a Lector at Christ the King Parish. Before he retired, Don served on the boards of several nonprofits, including as President of the Boston Bar Association and Board Chair of the College of Wooster. Don also has taught courses at Cornell Law School and Boston College Law School. He authors the Substack “Reflections of a Boston Lawyer,” and hosts a podcast called “Higher Callings.” Don is currently writing a memoir focused on his life, his work, and his faith journey.
