Let’s face it. If someone told us that God spoke to them, most of us would roll our eyes and take a step back. In our age of science, logic, and doubt, we don’t easily believe there is a God who speaks to us. Blame Hollywood, if you will. We have been conditioned to expect the voice of God to be some thundering bass, probably accompanied by flashes of lightning and rolling thunder.

Surely the God who created the universe, the God of unimaginable power and majesty, doesn’t speak in whispers.

Or does He?

Like so many aspects of our efforts to understand the spiritual realm, we are handicapped by our own human restrictions. If we are to hear from God, we expect to hear God’s message in the form of a sound, a voice that we can detect with our ears. We expect Him to speak in a language that we understand. We expect a clear directive or warning.

In our blindness, we do not see the possibility or even the probability that God’s voice may take another form. We are so accustomed to communicating via our five senses, that we struggle to accept that there may be other forms of communication.

Perhaps God’s voice is a whisper of conscience, perhaps it is a moment of inspiration. God’s voice might come as an awareness or an insight. Perhaps His voice is a pang of guilt or regret.

Could it be that God speaks to each of us in the form appropriate for the message? Could it be that we have already heard the voice of God speaking through a friend or neighbor, or through the message in a Sunday sermon?

Finally, you might ask, “why me?” Why would God choose to communicate with you? The answer is twofold. If we research the stories in the Bible, we might find that God chose ordinary people to use to deliver His messages. Those people may have ultimately become influential in their time, but they didn’t necessarily start out that way. So, why not you?

Secondly, maybe He communicates with each of us, all the time, but we aren’t tuned in. The static of our existence interferes. And one of the strongest signals that blocks our ability to receive His messages is the belief that God couldn’t possibly engage with all of humanity – there are just too many of us. Somehow, while we might believe that God created the billions of stars and planets in the universe, we can’t believe that He could keep track of the billions of souls on the earth. Just as the limits of our five senses restricts what we can comprehend, our ability to visualize large numbers makes it difficult for us to imagine any entity being able to manage such vast numbers of interactions.

Finally, is it truly the voice of God? No matter what form it takes, the test is to verify against the documented history of God’s nature. If the message is cloaked in love and caring, that speaks for itself.

Our challenge is to silence the static of our existence and focus on that small, whispering voice that is the true voice of God.

The political turmoil in the year 2020 cast a glaring spotlight on the divisions within the Christian churches as much as it did on the landscape of warring political parties. As might be expected, each faction accused the other of distorting the Christian message. As also might be expected, the extreme factions on both sides seemed to support their side with extreme interpretations.

So, which is the truest Christian message? It is a question made more complex by the realization that so much of our political and legal processes is based on the moral and ethical principles that arose from Judeo-Christian roots.

It might help to recognize that faith and politics are not new contestants in the struggle for the devotion of humanity. The Bible is filled, cover-to-cover, with political and spiritual conflict. From the very first books of the Old Testament through the life and death of Jesus, politics is a foundational element to most of the Bible. The people of God were continually fleeing, fighting or enslaved by various political entities. And there were traitors and abusers of power on all sides.

It is only in the revelations of the New Testament that the dust begins to settle and the will of God begins to become obvious through the acts and words of Jesus of Nazareth. And that message is revealed as love.

Surely, there are passages in the Bible that recognize the authority of the political powers. Some even suggest that those in power are placed there as part of God’s plan. After all, it was the political environment of the times that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, and it was the political climate of the time that brought Jesus to the cross.

But we need to remember that we are ill-equipt to comprehend what God may wish to accomplish. Perhaps God allows or creates a scenario that teaches His followers a vital lesson by allowing some suffering or pain. Perhaps what we see as vile or evil is meant to provide us with a reminder or wake-up call – a reminder to re-examine our understanding of His message. Perhaps He periodically provides us with a test of our faith so that we might strengthen our resolve.

Perhaps the best way to judge our church is to reflect on how closely our church adheres to the guiding principles and examples that Jesus gave us. Simply put, does our church practice those ideals, or simply recite them?

Compassion, respect, caring for the poor, the elderly, and the disadvantaged. Welcoming the traveler and feeding the starving. Forgiveness. Loving one another.

It’s all about showing love and gratitude for life.

If your church isn’t practicing true Christian principles, perhaps it has lost its way, and perhaps it is your task to help it get back on track by openly rejecting abuse and misuse of God’s Holy message. Even in church, your vote counts.

It’s an expression that most of us have heard. Many of us have said it – “if there’s anything I can do…” It’s commonly heard at funerals when a mourner wants to offer some comfort to someone who has lost a loved one. And, frankly, the recipient of that well-intentioned offer, seldom acts on that overture.

What most of us fail to recognize is that such an offer of support is one of the closest acts to God’s heart that we are capable of. That act of unselfish giving is approaching the core of God’s being. It is an act of love. It is an act unburdened by self-serving strings attached.

In the moment that we hold someone’s hand and make that offer, we have momentarily embraced our common feelings of pain and distress. In that moment, to some degree, we share their pain, and in doing so, we experience and project a type of love that is pure and free of conditions.

Most of us have experienced romantic love, but that type of love is burdened by self-interest. While we may experience a great affection for our romantic partner, that love is inevitably linked to our own feelings of joy. It is not so much an unselfish giving as it is a reciprocal exchange in which both parties benefit by experiencing pleasure in the process of giving to the other.

The act of offering to shoulder some of the pain that another person experiences is different. It is a purer form of love in the sense that the offer to share that pain has no benefit for those that make the offer.

“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” – 1 John 4:16

Although many will deny the reality of their testimony, there are multiple reports from people who claim they have experienced a brief encounter beyond death and returned to life. One of the most common descriptions these people report is a feeling of overwhelming love, unconditional love. They report that the feeling of love is the very essence of God. God is love.

For those of us who find ourselves consoling a mourner, it is important to realize that our offer – “if there is anything I can do…” is more than an offer. It is that full expression of love. By making that love-filled offer, we have already given that mourner the greatest gift we can give.

There’s no question that mankind has struggled to understand the mysteries of the universe for centuries, if not longer. Modern science has developed tools and techniques that continue to strip away the layers of those mysteries in an ever-increasing library of knowledge. But, like the layers of an onion, every layer revealed exposes a new layer and a new mystery.

Just as science continues to advance, the mysteries seem to multiply.

Science struggles to calculate the age of the universe, despite the fact that the standards applied are man-made. What is a year but the time our earth takes to make one full circle around our sun? So, we are applying a standard that didn’t exist when the universe was formed. For that matter, science cannot even agree on what time is, except in human terms. A year, a day, an hour, are all human-defined terms for a particular observed cycle. Perhaps time is a tool of God that allows for a sequence of events to happen without interference with each other.

We might also consider that, with an eternity to work with, God can use His tool of time to allow His other tools to process gradually. While, in human terms, we wonder at the concept of millions of years for evolution or erosion to occur, on God’s calendar, it may only be a tick of His clock.

Science is also hard at work trying to unravel the mysteries of the structure of matter. Once again, as we peel away another layer of the onion of matter, we find new layers that defy understanding. While the atom may have once been considered the basic foundation of all matter, science has since determined that even microscopic atoms are composed of even smaller elements, and those elements are composed of even smaller building blocks.

Science understands the workings of a magnetic field, but not why it exists. Science understands the power of the force of gravity, but not why it exists. Science knows there are frequencies of light we cannot see, and sounds we cannot hear, but not why.

Science postulates that there are dimensions of existence that we cannot detect, but not why.

It may be that God has a myriad of interacting tools that are beyond our reach, and more importantly, beyond our understanding. It may be that the biggest roadblock to our full understanding is that we have no language to describe those tools, and no image to visualize. Imagine trying to explain the workings of your cell phone to a jellyfish.

Perhaps we need to accept the truth that the works and tools of God are forever beyond our comprehension. If we could unlock God’s toolbox, chances are we wouldn’t be capable of understanding what we beheld. The complexities and interactions of all the elements of our existence and the universe we inhabit is clear proof of intelligent design, and an intelligence beyond our comprehension.

We write songs about it. We hold a loved one close for a slow dance at that wedding reception. It fuels our concern for the welfare of our parents or our children. We make movies about it. We talk about the power of love and how it makes the world go round. But, perhaps we underestimate the true power of love and how it rules our very existence.

If we research the numerous tales of people who claim to have died and returned to life, most of those tales involve that person temporarily slipping into what we call “the afterlife.” Many describe a visit to a realm where brilliant white light summons them and they see colors that they never knew existed. Many report encounters with friends or relatives who had passed earlier. The details of these incidents vary from person to person, but there is one element that seems to be universal.

That universal element is the sensation of total and unconditional love. Many of those who have passed over and returned speak of being overwhelmed by the feeling of peace, and feeling loved beyond measure.

So, what does this have to do with our efforts to apply logic to a quest to embrace faith?

We might begin with debating the validity of these tales of visits to the afterlife. We have already considered the fact that so many of these tales have descriptions that are similar if not identical. In particular, the description of colors unknown in life and brilliant white light that would seem to be blinding if viewed with human eyes. But, the occasional revelation of knowledge that the person having the experience should not have, seals the deal. There have been multiple stories of children who passed over and returned from death with comments or descriptions of grandparents they had never met in life, or speaking of meeting siblings who were stillborn or who had died before the birth of the child who now claimed to have experienced the meeting.

Once again, these encounters speak of love, and the evidence of these encounters clearly demonstrates that there is a dimension or realm of existence beyond the moment when physical death occurs.

It appears that love is the power that continues to be the unbreakable bond between the living and those who have passed over. Likewise, love appears to be the force that helps those who pass experience the feeling of being home where they belong.

Finally, the messages in the Bible clearly identify the power of love.

1John 4:7-8
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”