A friend gave me a lovely little daily meditation book, Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young. I have seen that some of my other friends have this same book. Mine is leather bound which makes it quite special.
This is the message I read this morning:
“As you listen to birds calling to one another, hear also My Love-call to you.” Those of you who have been following my blog lately will understand why this morning’s offering grabbed me right off the bat. The meditation goes on: “I speak to you continually: through sights, sounds, thoughts, impressions, scriptures.” I used to ask of God to speak to me directly as I prayed. It was fine with me if that “way” was through the scriptures, but I wanted the message to be specific enough for me to know that He was paying attention. When I would pray and not feel God’s presence in some way, I would feel disappointed. If this went on for a long time, I would feel abandoned.
There came a moment in my life when I awakened to the voice of God through others, especially people who shared my troubles and who truly cared about me. But over time, I began to experience what this reading is suggesting, that God speaking to us through a myriad of ways. I have shared in this blog my experience of the messages that animals and birds bring. I learned this from Native American spirituality. I have come to experience God’s speaking in my encounters throughout the day, in weather patterns, in mundane duties like gardening and doing laundry, and even in the pain I sometimes feel as my body ages. “Your part,” the reading suggests, “is to pay attention to My messages, in whatever form they come.” (The reflections are written in the first person like little e-mails from God).
I love this next line because of its profound truth: “You can find Me not only in beauty and birdcalls, but also in tragedy and faces filled with grief. I can take the deepest sorrow and weave it into a pattern for good.” Perhaps this is what the scriptures mean when they say that God “makes good of all things”.
It is believed by some that those who hear God speaking to them are specially chosen. I don’t believe this. I believe we are all chosen. But we don’t all know how to listen. Rather than trying to tell a person what God is wanting to communicate to them, perhaps we would serve them better by teaching them how to hear God’s message for themselves.