When I was growing up, we had letters and cards you could
send by regular mail or give to someone or leave them in their locker at school
if you wanted to do it anonymously. We had notes we passed, or had someone else
pass for us. We had telephones, but a lot of times we didn’t use our family’s
phone – for some reason that was off limits even for local calls unless you got
permission, and very often you didn’t want to ask to use the phone because then
everyone in the house would know who you were calling. That was ok if it was
your friend down the block who had invited you for dinner, but if it was a guy
you liked, no way. And if he called you and everybody knew about it, that was
torture too. But of course you did want to get calls, you just wanted a little
privacy for crying out loud, and that was impossible if you came from a family
like mine that lived in a house that had walls with ears and was full of people
listening in all the time.
We had secret signs and nicknames too – people you wanted to
talk about and you didn’t want anyone to know you were talking about them –
usually some guy you liked, but sometimes it was a teacher you wanted to
complain about without anyone but your friend knowing. And then there were
teachers you almost had a crush on – or maybe you just really liked or admired them – but you
didn’t want anyone to know you did so you’d give them a code name so you could
talk about them freely but privately.
But with all this code talking and note passing and
telephone game playing, we somehow seemed to communicate much better back in
those good old days before the internet and texting and cell phones. Now people
can be reached in all kinds of ways, but we can also disappear in plain sight. I’m
not a fan of texting at all – email is a bit better, but it has the same flaw –
you can write to someone and they might not reply or they might misunderstand, and what you write is very
different than what you’d say to someone. Just hearing someone’s voice can make
all the difference in the world about how you speak to them and what you hear
them say to you. Texting is a particular annoyance of mine because I like to
write and use words and texting is so short – you really can’t say much, and
what you do say could mean just about anything. I like a good old fashioned
phone call, and I like seeing someone face to face even better – that is if I'm communicating well with them – if I'm not and it's gotten difficult to deal with them, I don’t even
want to email them because email can become vitriolic if people have gotten to
the point of not caring what they say to you. But a good old fashioned
conversation is to me the breath of life. I miss the fact that we don’t do as
much of that any more, and I find in the work that I do that other people miss
it too. Yesterday in one of my classes I suggested that people take each other to
different food pantries and soup kitchens as a social outing, and they liked
the idea a lot. It’s community building which is something not a lot of people
bother to do any more, but it’s part of human nature to do things with other
people at least sometimes, and even though I know I need my solitude and enjoy
it, “face time” as they call it in the business world is something that is a
rare and precious commodity.
There are times when I am talking to God that I ask Him if I
could just see His face. I know that’s not something that’s going to happen,
but sometimes I ask anyway. It’s usually when I really need encouragement, when
things have me feeling very low, and I’ll say to Him, “I do trust you, but it
would help if you could just come here and sit with me like a regular person
would.” But that’s not really what I want when I really think about it. What I
really want is to have Him come in all His glory and prove to me that He really
exists. In John 20:28-29, after Jesus has risen from the dead and His disciple Thomas
has said that he will only believe that He has risen if he sees His hands and
can put his hands in the wounds, and if he sees His side and can put his hand in
the wound there also, Jesus lets Thomas do what he has asked and Thomas says, “My
Lord and my God!” Jesus then says to him, “Because you have seen me, you have
believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
I have had times in my life when God has shown up that I
have caught my breath and said, as Thomas did, “My Lord and my God!” It is at
times like that when I am awestruck with wonder at the beauty and power and
glory and love of God. But even though I have had those times, I still have other times when I ask Him
if He would just come and sit with me, just show me that He is real – I have
seen His glory, and yet I still wonder.
There are times when I am waiting on a promise, when He has
been talking to me all the way through the time that He is asking me to wait on
Him, that even though I hear His voice clearly I still want some kind of
miraculous sign. But God will very often come to us in the silence and the stillness,
and speak with gentle and quiet words the things that our hearts need to hear.
In 1 Kings 19:11-13 when Elijah has run away in fear from Queen
Jezebel because she wants to have him killed, the Lord speaks to him, “Then He
said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain
before the Lord.’ And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind
tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the
Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was
not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in
the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. So it was, when he heard it,
that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out and stood in the entrance
of the cave. Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, ‘What are you doing here,
Elijah?’
What a question at a time like that – I would have been thinking, what do you think I'm doing?! Elijah answers
God, “I have been very zealous for the
Lord God of hosts; because the children of Israel have forsaken your
covenant, torn down you altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone
am left; and they seek to take my life.” I think Elijah was very calm in his
answer – I would have been thinking how can you ask that question? They’re
trying to kill me! I’m hiding for my life! But there was something in the way
that God spoke to Elijah, even when He asked a question that He knew the answer
to, that helped Elijah to return to God instead of running away in fear. And when
God answers Elijah, He tells him, “Yet I have reserved 7,000 in Israel, all
whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”
You are not alone, God tells Elijah – not only are there more people like you,
there are 7,000 more.
There are times when it seems that my communication is
breaking down all around me, with people I love and people I know and people I
have to communicate with. I feel sometimes like I don’t have the tools to
communicate in the way that people are asking me to, that somehow I have lost
something in the translation. But God has a different way of communicating – He’s
not going to text me or email me or call me up, He’s not going to come into my
apartment and sit down for a cup of tea, even though I’d really like it if He
would. But His communication, even though it’s different than what I’m used to
and different than what I’m expecting is good communication all the same. He
gets His message to me loud and clear in ways that I can understand and know
are from Him. And the most important messages He has for me are the ones that
tell me I’m not alone. If there are 7,000 more still standing for Him, then I
can keep standing too.
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
No comments:
Post a Comment