God Up There; God Out There

Our cry goes out, “Where are you, God?” We ask this many times in our lives. We ask this many times in our days when we see tragedies, or the poor struggling to eat or live. We blame God, yet we know who is at fault. We ask God for things, yet we know where to procure them ourselves. We imagine God as a benevolent sovereign sitting on a royal throne handing out treasures and goodies to all who have pleased him. We ask Him to cure us, to make us rich by winning the lottery, and to give us true love. All material things that matter to us, but not necessarily to God.

We ask, “Where are You, God?” We cry, we wait, oh God, how we wait. We refuse to accept that God does not and will not hand out gifts in our time frame; as a matter of fact, God will not just hand out gifts, willy-nilly. Yet, we pray, we pray. And, we are right to pray; but we must pray with an open mind and an open ear. In our prayers, we must listen for the small whisper that we sometimes hear. I have heard it; I think, no, I know, it is always there, but I do not always hear it, for I am sometimes consumed by my own thoughts.

However, when I open my mind to receive thoughts in answer to what I have prayed, I have heard this voice, sometimes weak, sometimes a shout, but always a mystery that I have to decode, just as we have to decode the parables of Jesus. When I hear this, then meditate on it, think about it logically, then think about it backwards and forwards, then left to right and up and down, I sometimes understand what this voice has said to me. And a feeling comes over me that is more glorious than I could ever explain.

I feel that I have been given a message as Moses received so long ago. It is so clear, it is so brilliant, I want to shout it to all whom I meet, but I cannot. I know that I can only share it through my action with others as I meet them, because that is how God has encouraged me on my mission through life. That little voice that is inside of me amazes me, for when I go outside at night and look up in the sky and see all those stars, I know that little voice is also way out there.