“I haven’t heard from him much lately,” that’s what I would say if I was asked.
But saying that — like that — I feel guilty about it, like it’s my fault, and I feel less than the the great ones.
We haven’t talked on the phone — we don’t do that, but of course nobody does that even though some act like they do — and we haven’t sat down and just had it out. I mean, we have sat down, every day, but he hasn’t been that forthcoming. With me he never is. He is never very obvious, never blunt, never commanding.
Some people are like, “God told me this, or God told me that.” Some people are like “I felt like God wanted me to do this, or I felt like God wanted me to do that.”
I’m more like, we pretty much hang out most of the time, and I really want to do the right things — make good choices, puzzle out what to do, please him, ask others what they think — so I just assume that I am always hearing, always being led, always pretty much in step, except when I know I’m not because I do something so selfish it’s obvious it’s wrong.
For me it’s kind of like, “I haven’t heard from him lately, because I have been hearing from him constantly lately,” if that makes any sense at all. It’s like the voice is so constant that it is never absent so it is not that obvious! It may seem arrogant to say that it is like that for me, but it is really a very humble and ordinary thing. Wisdom shouts, constantly, to all of us, from every corner. Isn’t that what the Bible says? Tozer says it this way, “God is continuously articulate.”
On Saturday, I took an unlikely moment to ask someone how they were doing, listened a lot, affirmed their perspectives and prayed with them in a parking lot. It was ordinary in the sense that it was normal for me, just what I do, but perhaps it was more than that too.
Was it led? Did it come from God? I’ll leave that to the super-spiritual to determine, but I don’t need to decide that to make it spiritual or special or to claim that I’m special. Like you, like all of us, I live and move and have my being within the divine ambit, the supernatural circle and the profound ambience of God.
My read on this is that it’s all led — except when it isn’t, and we mostly know when it isn’t. The rest — it is pure God.
I’m good with that. We are not hearing that much because we are always hearing.
The everyday good, the common care, the normal love — it’s all spiritual.
Thrive! 