Devotional Reading from the Daily Common Lectionary: Mark 9: 1-13

Text: He (Peter) did not know what to say, for they were terrified. (v. 6)

When we don’t know what to say, why is it that too often we insist on saying something?! “It’s for the best.” (It usually doesn’t feel like and is generally not!) ” “God needed another angel…or flower…or whatever.” (An especially terrible thing to say about God when a child’s mommy or daddy died.) I could go on, but you get the idea. 

In today’s reading Peter, James & John had seen something that theologians call “The Transfiguration” and have difficulty explaining. Not knowing what to say, Peter said something “silly”, simply because he didn’t know what else to say. 

A voice from a cloud corrected Peter essentially saying that in Jesus God was doing a new thing, pulling aside for a moment, the curtain between the Temporal and Eternal, thus revealing the essential nature of God.

Sometimes when we don’t know what to say the most profound thing to say is to say nothing at all. Just being there says it all.

Lord God, teach me the eloquence of silence. Amen.