the scream

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The painting is called The Scream.  It was painted by Edvard Munch, in his diary entry headed, 22 January 1892, he described his inspiration for the image:

“One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream.”

The phrase above that haunts me is “I sensed a scream passing through nature.”  Do you sense the same thing?  Did you sense a scream when you heard about the girl in India, the plight of the Syrian people, the school in Newtown Conn., the ambush of the N.Y. firefighters?  There is a scream passing through nature in 2013 just as it was in 1892.

Notice the shadowy figure leaning over the rail in the background of the painting? He/she conveys a sense of despair and hopelessness.  Many times we wonder how we can go on.  We find ourselves with head in hand wondering how we got to this point and what on earth we can do about it.

1 Kings 19 tells the story of Elijah. He is hearing the screams of his day. Elijah is hiding in a cave. He doesn’t know if he can go on. He asks God to end his life. God tells him to stand at the entrance to the cave where he witnesses a deafening wind, an earthquake, a great fire, and finally a gentle whisper.  God says I wasn’t in the wind, earthquake or fire.  God says I was in the whisper. The great scream of nature is overcome by a whisper from God.  I like that. 

God is whispering to you and me just as he did to Elijah. God is calling our name. God is providing hope. God is helping us find the way forward.  The trick is finding, no, making the time to listen.  Finding the places in our lives where we can hear the whisper.

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