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It’s okay to talk to God, but you’re in trouble if God talks back! So how can God get our attention to guide our lives if we can’t trust the voices in our heads. And, of course, most of us don’t hear voices, which brings us to the same question: How does God guide our lives?
The Bible is a wonderful resource of examples of the way God has spoken to prophets, disciples, kings and common folks in the past.
Job heard God speak in the mighty whirlwind. Isaiah and Ezekiel experienced great visions that stopped them in their tracks. Moses had his burning bush. What about you and me? How does God speak to us?
At Pentecost, according to the book of the Acts of the Apostles, God’s Spirit was like a rushing wind and fiery flames. Spirit and fire transformed those present into conduits of God’s liberating message. This miracle of many tongues was even more a miracle of many open hearts and minds. Those who were present listened and heard and experienced the outpouring of God’s loving presence. Some of us experience God’s guidance in the rush of energy, a fiery sermon, a dramatic encounter with inspiration. God opens and transforms us all at once.
In John’s Gospel the Spirit is said to be more like the cleansing presence of life-giving water in a thirsty land. God heals and cools our passions through gentle, emotional changes. “And the Spirit intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words.” We are comforted, guided, healed by a loving presence that soothes and fills us.
The Spirit of God can be like fire; it can be like water; it can be like air – not just the mighty wind of Job’s whirlwind, but the still small whispered wind that softly nudges us in the recesses of our minds. When we can “be still and know” that God is God, we are able to notice the subtle inspiration that gently encourages us to believe in our best selves, serve God’s insistent calling to compassion and justice. You know when you know. The Spirit is in the very air we breathe. Every breath is a reminder to rest is the arms of God and allow ourselves to be guided.
The Spirit is like fire, like water, like air, and it is also at work in the very flesh of our bodies. God is an embodied God. Spirit is of the earth and speaks perhaps most vividly through our bodies.
The ancient Hebrew faith was based in trusting a God who indwelled life and worked through history. Christianity is founded on the Incarnation – the understanding that Spirit indwells flesh. And so it is that God speaks to us through our bodies if we can but learn to listen.
A knot in your stomach may speak of an unacknowledged fear. More serious illness may demand our attention so that a deep personal transformation becomes possible. When we dare to ask ourselves what our experience is trying to teach us we may discover God’s loving guidance in the most mundane of circumstances.
I love Jesus’ advice that we remove the log from our own eye before trying to dislodge the mote from the eye of someone else. It is not just an injunction against being judgmental, it is practical. When my eyes are bothering me, I ask God, What am I not seeing here?
God has a way of working through coincidences. The Spirit of God, like fire, water, air and earth, is everywhere, subtly and not so subtly working to inspire our lives with meaning, with presence, with love. We are never alone, always guided. May we listen, keep alert, and follow. Amen.
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