When Nothing Happens

I enjoy riding my bicycle around Davis Islands each day. I’m content with doing my ten miles at a very moderate speed (about 14 to 15 miles per hour).  But there are plenty of serious cyclists out there, guys and gals who blow past me with their shouts of “On your left!”  Sometimes these intense pedal pushers will pass me multiple times while I’m chooglin along.

These serious cyclists are striving to improve their times, their form, and their strength.  To do all that, they have to put in mile after mile after mile, all the while keeping up their speed as well. It’s all about building endurance.  And it’s a grueling experience.

The truth is that all of us are subjected to grueling tests of endurance every day, every week, every year of our lives.  But these endurance races aren’t measured in miles.  Instead, these tests of stamina sneak up on us.

Let me get concrete: Over the course of your lifetime you will spend at least five years waiting in lines and two years just trying to get in touch with people by telephone.  You can also look forward to spending eight months opening nothing but junk mail and six months sitting and staring at traffic lights that refuse to turn green.  In fact, if, in order to get to work, your time behind the wheel averages twelve minutes per day, you will spend 38 40-hour weeks just getting yourself to and from your workplace.  Now that takes endurance!

What we do with ourselves while we are enduring the daily grind to our soul and sanity of these daily tests reveals just how faithful we are to God.  A tremendous amount of life is just waiting.  Being faithful when nothing much seems to be happening is what it means to ‘keep the faith.’

Moses is an unexpected, unlikely example of endurance.  ‘Unexpected’ and ‘unlikely’ because if any Biblical figure can claim to have lived a life filled with divine intervention, it was Moses.  Here was a man to whom God appeared and spoke in no uncertain terms.  Here was a leader who could call on God to rain curses down upon his enemies and perform great acts of deliverance for his people.  Here was an individual who had experienced a life of privilege in Pharaoh’s household, a life of hardship and rejection in the desert, and a life of power and respect as the divinely appointed leader of the Israelites.

So Moses isn’t the first person that comes to mind when you think about someone finding ways to fill time when God doesn’t seem to be showing up, when nothing happens.

But in today’s Old Testament lesson, that is exactly what Moses confronts.  As the leader of “a stiff-necked people” Moses already knew that all eyes were on him.  The Israelites watched Moses for inspiration, for guidance, and for leadership.  But with typical human perversity they were also watching to see if Moses would slip up, step too far out on a limb, or (in this case) climb too far up a mountain.

With this halfway-up-the-mountain announcement to huffing priests and puffing leaders that God required him to continue up to the top alone, Moses knew his reputation was at stake.  Moses had walked out and up, leaving Aaron and Hur in charge, because he had heard God call him to yet another special mission.  Imagine Moses’ state of mind then, when after his dramatic departure and the arrival of a mysterious cap of clouds on this mountaintop, Moses then experiences six days of nothing.  Camped up within this cloud cover, Moses didn’t even have a view to take his mind off his inertia.

How different the Exodus story would be if, instead of sticking it out until that seventh day, Moses had given up in embarrassment and disgust on the fifth or sixth day.  Despite the hardship, the cloying clouds and the sense that one was encamped on the edge of a “devouring fire,” Moses stuck it out.  Moses endured.  The riches-to-rags-to-righteousness experiences that had unfolded in Moses’ personal life history had taught him that if he wanted to hear God’s voice, he had to be willing to wait.

Because sometimes when you least expect it . . . nothing happens.

As the cloud of God’s glory continued to sock in that mountaintop and enfold him in silence, Moses was faced with the problem of how to fill his days during this lengthy weather delay.  Though God’s presence was near, God’s voice kept silent.  It was up to Moses to fill this silence with evidence of his faith and acceptance of God’s will.

How do you do it?  How do you handle life when . . . nothing happens?  How do you fill up those hard-to-endure dry spells that choke your days?  How do you keep faith when God seems to be keeping secrets instead of keeping promises?

Author Dan Simpson has a suggestion.  Imagine that there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400.  It carries over no balance from day to day.  Every evening it deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day.  What would you do?  Draw out every cent, of course!

Each of us has such a bank.  Its name is time.  Every morning it credits us with 86,400 seconds.  Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this we have failed to invest to good purpose.  It carries over no balance.  It allows no overdraft.  Each day it opens a new account for us.  Each night it burns the remains of the day.  If we fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is ours.  There is no going back.  There is no drawing against tomorrow.  We must live in the present on today’s deposits.  The clock is running.

To realize the value of one year, ask a student who failed a grade.

To realize the value of one month, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one week, ask the editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize the value of one hour, ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realize the value of one minute, ask a person who missed the plane.

To realize the value of one second, ask a person who just avoided a car wreck.

To realize the value of one millisecond, ask the person who won a silver medal in the Olympics.

We’ve all heard the saying, “Yesterday is history.  Tomorrow is mystery.  Today is a gift.  That’s why we call it the present.”

God asks us to treasure each and every moment of our lives, even those times when nothing seems to be happening.  So what did Moses do for seven days on a cloudy mountaintop?  I would venture that he prayed.  A lot.  And that’s exactly what we can do.

Caught in traffic?  Instead of texting, what if we used that moment as a time to pray?

What would happen if the first message slip on our desk or phone that we returned each morning was directed toward God?

Rather than reaching for the Pepto Bismol to calm our churning stomach, what if we poured our deepest fears and longings and dreams to the always-listening ear of God?

Prayer involves endurance.  Even when nothing happens, or worse yet when nothing good happens, that doesn’t mean we have carte blanche to fold our tents and go home.  God’s schedule is the only calendar that counts, and none of us are privy to its pages.

On this Transfiguration Sunday, are you caught in cloud cover?  Does your life look to you like just one big rain delay?  As we travel through life, many of us seem to be missing our rear view mirror.  We fail to recall how God has been faithful in the past.  We’re fixated on and anxious about the future.  But don’t despair.  Endure.  Remember that the person who walks with God is more joy-filled than the one who rides alone in the back of a limousine.

For with God, nothing is wasted.  So, remember Moses.  And pray.  Sometimes when you least expect it . . . nothing happens. But even amidst what appears to be nothing, our faith is the greatest something.