God speaks to us in a manner tailored for each of us so that we have the best opportunity to receive God’s personal messages. God speaks in our own vernacular, even at the risk of not sounding “holy” enough to our ears. (God does not speak in Hebrew in a 2000 year old dialect and cultural context to a person native to Japan.)
It is a somewhat tricky business, this God-speaking thing. Many doubt that such a thing is even possible, except perhaps to a select few supra-divine mystics. Yet many of us long for such conversations. The challenge is separating ourselves from our doubts and accepting those divine conversations when they occur, while discerning those many ego moments when we invent such a pretend dialog out of our own imagination. It is a subtle yet hugely significant distinction.
To some small number of people, God speaks directly. Perhaps audibly to the ears, heard quietly in the mind. Or perhaps in written narrative, 1:1 between God and the pen in hand, bypassing the filter of our mind in favor of the expressed Word. These forms of direct communication with God work only if our heart and mind are open and ready to hear.
For some others, the conversation must come more indirectly through the voices of other intermediaries. In the midst of an otherwise everyday normal conversation, with a person in a close relationship or even just a casual stranger, “something” is casually, almost offhandedly, said to us that inexplicably jumps out at us and grabs our attention. Likely a single sentence within an otherwise unremarkable conversational paragraph. Something of no noticeable significance to the speaker, but which is heard deep in an unknown place within us, leaving our path slightly but deliberately altered in that brief moment. Hearing God in this way requires us to be alertly listening, to recognize those unexpected momentary but critical instances when they occur. We do not hear God if we are the one doing all the talking.
Such moments as these are a more informal version of “channeling,” which is a three-party conversation between two participants. God, through a speaker, comes into our ears; the middle party is not really part of the dialog. The speaker’s mind is set aside for that briefest of time, out of the way of the conversation between God and us, simply providing a voice to God’s words which are flowing through them.
If our mind or hand or ears are not good media for conversation, then God speaks to us through circumstances. Events happen to us, whether tragic or exhilarating. Opportunities open up to us or are shut down. Our life flow – career, job, family role, relationships – changes. Changes we typically judge as being in a positive or negative direction. These events are God’s way of effectively saying, “Go this way.” “Do not go this way.” “It is time to move in another direction, to yet another place.” “You need to rethink what you have previously believed, and give thought to a new idea.” This way of God speaking to us can often be very troubling or upsetting depending upon the circumstance we encounter. The message will not likely be seen in the immediate moment; the event itself first serves to simply get our attention. God’s actual message will only be heard by us in a calm, quiet period of reflection we must give to it thereafter. We will rarely hear God’s words within that circumstance in the heat of the moment.
If none of these methods work, then we must hear God through our eyes. God leads us to walk in the embrace of the solitude of nature’s forests and deserts. We walk on a beach and lose ourselves in the protective blanket of the regular cadence of the waves. We sit on the solid rocks of a mountaintop and take in the vast visual expanse of other mountains and valleys in front of us. We look at the sky, clouds, stars and planets and see the unbounded miracle of a never-ending Creation. We stand in the cities and see majestic architecture, or sit in museums and devour creative expression in art. We lie in a farm field on a late summer evening with renewed appreciation for the rural simplicity of a way of life that nourishes our body. In the doing of any of these things, we rediscover the full power and expansiveness of God’s Creation. In that rediscovery, we find a sense of place and connection with every thing, once again become part of an indivisible whole. We hear a different kind of voice, out of which in some inexplicable way comes clarity: an answer to our question, a new direction to follow, a new understanding of What Is.
God speaks softly to us. In our own personal way. Sometimes speaking silence, thereby encouraging us to find our own answers out of our growing spiritual maturity. Likely giving us a message we do not really want to hear, challenging us to move from where we now are to a new and more fulfilling place. Are we willing to hear God?
© 2015
Randy Bell www.OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com
1 comment:
This one I can really relate to, I think a lot of us can.
I visit and prepare lunch for a lovely 94 year old lady--my volunteer "work"--and she asked me the other day, "What if you talk to God all the time, ask him questions, and he doesn't answer. Don't you think that's rude?"
I chuckled but understood. I've felt that way more than a few times. I remember reading that Mother Theresa felt the same way, and I thought, "If Mother Theresa can't hear God..."
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