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Elijah has a song stuck in his head. Like a broken record, or a tape loop, or an MP3 in infinite repeat, he is telling himself the same story over and over. “You failed in your job. You are a major disappointment. Your life is pointless. Everyone is against you. You are alone. … You failed in your job. You are a major disappointment. Your life is pointless. Everyone is against you. You are alone.” It is the myth by which Elijah the prophet now lives.

It was not always so. Elijah was the greatest prophet. He had been fed in the desert by God, who had sent him food carried by ravens. Later, befriending a widow and her son, he provided through God’s blessing a jar of flour and a jug of oil that could never be emptied, and through Elijah God restored to life the widow’s dead child.

The people of Israel had been worshiping a competing deity named Baal. It was Elijah’s mission to turn Israel back to God. In a dramatic competition, Elijah humiliated Baal and those who serve him. Perhaps you remember the story: In their presence Elijah drenched an altar and everything around it with water. He did it three times. Then he called on God, who sent “fire [that] consumed the burnt offering, the wood, [and even] the stones, and the dust.” It was Elijah’s finest triumph.

Yet now, he sits alone in a cave on Mount Sinai. He is more than discouraged. He has just before asked God to take his life. He won’t eat. He sleeps all the time. He gets no pleasure from his victories and accomplishments, seeing them as nothing. He blames everyone else for his troubles. He feels completely alone. … Elijah is severely depressed. He has hit bottom. Where is God for him now?

The fire comes. The wind comes. The earthquake comes. Elijah hears no God in these awesome events, these displays of power, these noisy announcements. God was not there, the reading says. Or is it that God was not there for Elijah’s ears? Maybe these stormy messengers sounded too much like the stormy messages already in Elijah’s head.

It is not until things calm down before Elijah can even begin to hear God. What our Bible calls “the sound of sheer silence,” which is more exact than the “still small voice” you may remember from King James. For God does not yet speak. It is not until Elijah heard the silence that he came out of the cave. “And then,” it says, he heard God’s word and guidance.

The voices in our heads can get pretty loud and pushy. And like Elijah’s, they can be way too persistent. They tell us that we did the wrong thing: I should have done, I shouldn’t have done. That we are weak and cowardly: how could I have, why didn’t I? They tell us that our characters are flawed: I’m a wimp, I’m a bully, I’m perverted, I’m disloyal, I’m wicked, I’m lazy. They tell us that there is no point in what we are doing or planning, that our successes are really nothing to be proud of, that people who love us are really clueless or misguided or patronizing. They tell us that we are alone in the world.

These voices talk too much.

Sometimes these thoughts are based on things that really happened, or things we really did. We live in a world full of dismaying circumstances and evil doings. But these stories we tell to ourselves about ourselves become myths when we tell them over and over. They take on a mythical power that they do not deserve.

Whenever we hear ourselves say, “I always” or “I never” or “I never will;” whenever we hear ourselves make sweeping statements about our own worth and work, whenever we hear ourselves saying that no one loves us and no one will, then we hear a myth of our own making. When the myth is persistent and intense, it can threaten our lives as it threatened Elijah’s.

I hate those voices. I want them to shut up. I know they are not from God. I want to blow them out, or burn them out, or shake them out. I want God to do that. I look to noisy, addictive, and distracting things to either muffle my inner voice or compete with it. But God is no more in those things than God was in Elijah’s wind, fire, and earthquake.

There is no doubt that God is an awesome God. That it is possible to find God in things grand and powerful and mysterious. And there are times when what we need most is to be reminded of God’s power and our powerlessness. But there are other times when the grandeur of God’s creation becomes just another thing to fret about, just another thing to come up short against, just another thing that speaks to us in some unknowable language.

When therapists and other care-givers are trained to deal with those who are dying or very ill, they are taught to not offer solutions and explanations. They are not to dismiss the patient’s complaints and worries, but at a hospital bedside, their job is not to try to figure things out or fix things or alleviate the sadness and loss that people feel. In the jargon, the therapist is to assume a quiet presence. When our inner voices are so mean and caustic, God’s quiet presence is what we need most.

When our children were growing up, we read to them every night. During the day we’d do all we could to guide them and teach them how to be the people we hoped they’d be and to protect them from the harm that we hoped would never befall them. We reasoned with them and explained things and issued edicts and rulings and maneuvered and even shouted from time to time. But at the end of the day, we all put all that aside. And now that our children are grown, I think that that time of quiet was one of the few things we did that actually influenced the people they have become.

We are blessed to know a God who is both awesome and intimate, both powerful and powerless. When we cannot escape that broken record song, we are like the very ill. We don’t need efficient, competent, and powerful healers. We need God’s quiet presence. We need to know that God will laugh and whisper and shed tears with us and just sit there for a while.

When God comes to Elijah, God does not offer to address Elijah’s grievances or to relieve his woes. Instead, he says to Elijah: you are my prophet. I chose you. You are my child. I need you just as you are. God does listen to Elijah’s story. God does not dismiss his worries any more than the therapist dismisses the worries of his or her patient. But God knows that such stories are myths.

We tell ourselves wicked tales over and over. But God knows a different story. A story about us. A story that’s truer than the malicious myths we tell ourselves. And that can push them out. In the sound of sheer silence, we stop our noisy voices. And repeat instead the story God knows: You are my child. I chose you. I need you just as you are.