Day 26, Part II: What do you hear?
What Do You Hear?
I posted the two recent quotes by Etty Hillesum (Day 25 http://40dayfast.posterous.com/day-25-no-one-is-in-their-clut) and N.T. Wright (Day 26 http://40dayfast.posterous.com/day-26-whisperings-in-our-inne) <http://40dayfast.posterous.com/day-26-whisperings-in-our-inne)> because they resonate with me.
Their words go beyond mere reassurance that others believe in The Divine. They speak of my personal experience of a God that is intimate and alive, real and sacred, a God that moves within my life with the ethereal whisper of fine-spun gossamer and delicate filament, not quite visible to the naked eye and yet pulsating undeniably like an unquenchable quasar, the sure heartbeat of His presence.
Like Etty Hillesum, I feel Him in secret dwelling places—unmovable, unmistakable, like a bit of ore, precious metal lodged in a site deep within that I can’t quite identify, its nucleus irradiating an expansive sense of being alive.
Like N.T. Wright, I hear whisperings from someone who cares about me and the world—words of truth that show me how to put things right when I have badly botched up, perspective when the forces of this world create tilt that would make me believe I am going to spill out, mercy when we have all gone over the edge, grace that picks us up and shows the eternal, imperishable beauty that conquers the darkest evil to give us hope.
When I read the experience of fellow believers in Jesus, seei on paper, hear in their words the intimacy with the God that I know who does not leave us and is here for our hope—I feel a simultaneous welling up of tears and shouts of “Yes! Yes! Yes!” He is here for me. He is here for you.
This is not something new. The apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4: 6-12,16-18
vv 6-12
For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
vv 16-18
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
I believe that God does speak to us. I stand by that. We can all hear His voice, feel His presence. It only requires surrender—not in the sense of being defeated because God is not our enemy, but in the sense of putting down our guard to trust the One who loves us more than we can begin to imagine.
Like the photo in Day 24, we must rest unguarded, quieted with our head near His heart so that we can begin to catch the echoes, as N.T. Wright puts it, until the whisperings are real and we are “rescued at last.”
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Listen on posterous
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