True When Whispered Hearing God's Voice in a Noisy World

Abingdon Press

Chapter One

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?" He said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." —Genesis 3:8-10

When it comes to relating to God, things have never been altogether straightforward. If our own lives are not proof enough, the Bible, from beginning to end, gives us plenty of evidence of crossed signals, missed cues, mixed motives, and misconstrued meanings in the relationship between creature and Creator. If we are looking for examples, Genesis makes a good beginning. You know the story: God walks through the garden of Eden calling for the missing pair: "Where are you?" It turns out the man and woman are among the trees, hiding "from the presence of the Lord God." Once they are summoned, however, they instantly emerge from the shadows and rejoin the relationship, explaining themselves with remarkable forthrightness. "I heard the sound of you in the garden," Adam confesses, "and I was afraid" (Genesis 3:8-10).

With that brief narrative we learn something very important about the spiritual life, namely, that the presence of God is a thing we want and ward off in just about equal measure. Adam and Eve are forerunners of the rest of us, darting beneath the dark cover of trees at the first sign of the divine, then answering immediately when they are summoned, as though relieved to have been discovered. Still dusty behind the ears, they have learned early that the experience of encountering their Creator is a complicated mixture of worry and welcome, judgment and joy.

Picture the three—Adam, Eve, and God—talking in the shadows of the garden grove, their serpentine conversation twisting from confusion to confession.

God: Where are you? Adam: I hid myself. God: Who told you? Adam: The woman. God: What is this? Woman: The serpent.

We can spend a good deal of time placing blame on those who place blame. I would rather we notice the fact that, in the moment of encounter with the God of the garden, the two slowly but surely emerge from their lost-and-hiding place, cease their shuffling, and come clean. "I ate," they each acknowledge in turn. Call their confessions convoluted if you like, but call them courageous too. If they spit and sputter their way to truth and responsibility, at least they get there.

I remember a family outing to an amusement park years ago during which overcast skies suddenly opened up in an afternoon thunderstorm. Everyone in the park sought shelter from the downpour wherever it could be found—in restaurants, under awnings, beneath pavilions. A gift shop is where our family found harbor—along with what seemed like the entire population of the park. Inside the little store, we crowded into aisles of trinkets and postcards, peering out at the rain the way a hidden mouse studies a cat walking through the room. At the counter, the clerk did a brisk business in overpriced umbrellas and ponchos, selling out of both within minutes. Those so equipped bravely ventured back into the park while the rest of us, jealous of their good fortune, waited for the skies to clear. Later in the afternoon, the storm long past and the sun shining, the park was once again bustling as before. A long line snaked from the entrance to one of the most popular amusements in the park, a ride along a "river" canal in a dug-out "log" canoe. The ride's greatest attraction, as you may already know, is the expectation that on the canoe's final descent an enormous splash of water leaves the rider thoroughly soaked.

If God is the water of our entry into the spiritual life, we will take extra precautions to be certain we don't get wet, and also to ensure that we do. Adam and Eve's initial instinct is much like our own—to head for the gift shop at the first sign of a downpour. The question God asks, "Where are you?" allows that the two are both lost and hiding, which turns out to be precisely true. For some strange reason, lost and hiding go together like axle grease and road grime, one attracting the other. This couple wastes no time in pairing the two. Having become lost through the lure of the serpent, they choose to hide rather than seek to be found.

God's first call is a question, and a searching one at that: "Where are you?" Humanity's first response is a halfhearted smokescreen, followed by transparency. And so begins the Bible's montage of the practice of prayer. Scripture will eventually give us wonderful illustrations of direct, declaratory encounters between Caller and called, clear invitation followed by ready assent. We will see fishing boats left rocking in the shallows, abandoned coins rolling across the tax table and falling into the dirt, a blind man's only cloak cast off as of no worth by a mere summons. Yet if it is a sober dose of more-often-than-not we are after, we will never do better than this first encounter. For prayer is voluntary, employing neither leashes nor lockstep marches to accomplish its aim of securing us in a relationship with God. From the first syllable of prayer and even before, we are free, like Adam and Eve, to dart or drift from the holy conversation, able at any instant to hide from the presence or feel ourselves to be lost from it. There are plenty of leafed-out trees to serve the purpose, not to mention umbrellas and ponchos. All for a price, of course.

Two words you would never expect to have any relationship to each other are actually kissing cousins. Those words are "pray" and "precarious." Both come from a root word meaning "to ask." "Precarious" describes the shaky experience of coming hat in hand to another with a concern of real importance, which is essentially also what happens in prayer. We are uncertain, unassured; there are no formulas regarding the disposition of our request, or even that our prayer will fairly represent our actual need. It is a precarious moment of absolute dependence and trust; in other words, it is a moment for divine intervention, a reality for which we have reserved the word "grace."

If you have ever wondered if you were alone in your ambivalence about putting in the time and effort to seek God's presence, wonder no more—ambivalence is a biblical tradition that runs deep and ranges wide. If you are in line for a poncho one minute and the log ride the next, you can expect a crowd at both locations. For all sorts of reasons, we are prone to resist most vehemently the very things we long for most deeply. Even when we do choose to give God the time of day, when practicing prayer in a personal way becomes an ordinary reality in our daily lives, holy encounter continues to be a tenuous arrangement. We are the newborn calf with its mother, never more content than when it is nestled at her side, yet tottering like the dickens as she works it over with her sandpaper tongue. Sometimes we seek that cleansing, caressing contact with the mother cow; other times, it...