God speaks when He wants and through whomever or whatever he wants. We have little problem recognizing his voice through the lone stars in the early morning sky, rising above a thin, red line announcing the sunset, or through the beauty of the rolling mountains ahead of us to the horizon as we make the crest of the last high ridge, or through the unbelievable expanse of canyon before us as we emerge from the Arizona pines and confront the eternity that is the Grand Canyon, but....
Isn't his voice also heard when we see wonderful things that man has created? Not only in some beautiful painting by one of the masters that speaks more than the mere canvas and paint themselves possibly can, but artistic beauty wherever we see it, whether in some sketch done by a practiced artist or a child, in a grand building designed by some great architect or a small, homey cabin. God speaks to us through the grand things and through the small. Through the perfect and the imperfect.
Sometimes he even uses words, as the saying goes. But too often, we plug our ears. We construct an artificial sacred/secular divide that keeps us from hearing the voice of God in and through the words of our concerned neighbor, who isn't even a Christian, through the self-serving voice of a politician from the other party, who momentarily grasps some bit of eternity, even in the lyrics of some secular rock song coming through our radios or some Hollywood movie searching for a way to relate.
We plug our ears, because we can't believe that God would speak to us like that, but God still speaks, whether we hear or not. He still speaks, even though we warn our neighbors not to listen and condemn our brothers for hearing him in the wrong voices in the wrong places.
God still speaks, wanting to get through to us, wanting to explode our lives, our world, our universe.
Will we unplug our ears?
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