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God’s voice speaks from many and various pulpits, not all of them grand. Moses heard God’s voice from a burning bush (Exodus 3:1-17), a sight to make anyone “listen up!” The prophet Elijah had a harder time. Fleeing certain death, he hid in a cave. When a voice beckoned him out onto the mountain, “for the Lord is about to pass by,” Elijah went out and waited.
Spurning the great natural disruptions of earthquake, wind and fire, the voice of God came to Elijah in the sound of silence – and silence is still a sound. God often speaks into silence, and sometimes all we can do is listen for the voice of God in the silence.
In letters discovered after her death, Mother Teresa wrote of experiencing almost 50 years of God’s silence. She felt abandoned by God, but as she listened into the silence, she began to identify with Jesus’ cry of abandonment from the cross and with the abandonment felt by the poor. She realized that she ministered not only to the poor, but with them.
This message is excerpted from “Listen! God is calling.” by M.E. Stortz in the July/August 2019 Gather magazine.