2 Kings 2:1-12

Year B - Transfiguration or Mountain Top to Valley

February 15, 2015

2 Kings 2:1-12

Whirlwinds find their reversal in silence [ref. The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible].

The original languages translated into “whirlwind” have been variously translated and so it is difficult to track what is going on here in English translations.

Remember that Elijah, famously of the “still small voice”, now meets G*D in a tempest, a whirlwind. Remember the disciples on the lake in the midst of a storm, a whirlwind, who find that storm stilled, quieted, silenced.

In our lives we bounce back and forth between whirlwind and silence with different folks having different proportions of time in each.

It is a transfiguring experience to become aware of G*D in both, the conversation these can have with one another, and our own preferences. When life is too settled, a whirlwind can be helpful in figuring out what is most important and held to when all about you is going to hell in a handbasket. When life is too topsy-turvy, a blessing to regain perspective is time spent in quiet, silence.

Making friends of brother whirlwind and sister silence bears much good fruit. Both can bear G*D and both can be used as a sign of absence from G*D. Our work is to find which is applicable in the current moment and live from its gift.