I don’t know if you have confluences in your life that seem to be God speaking to you. Now, that’s about the most obscure sentence ever written, so let me try to explain. In Hebrews Chapter 1, Paul explained it this way:

In other words, prophets had their time revealing the word of God, the revelation of God was complete in Jesus Christ, so prophets were no longer needed. We don’t have prophets arising to challenge a particular set of circumstances. We also don’t have large-scale miracles such as we read about in Scripture. Let me say that I believe there are still prophets in the sense that Martin Luther King was prophet and Mother Teresa was a prophet, and Nelson Mandela was a prophet. They challenged ways of thinking and brought the Kingdom just a little closer. In like manner, I believe miracles still occur, although they are not big miracles. But, in a sense, a miracle is a miracle and one size seems to fit all situations and is exactly what is needed.
So, God does not speak to us by way of burning bushes or writing on the palace wall or angel visitation, but God does have a way of getting our attention when we need to change some situation or some thing about ourselves.

To be more specific (and more to the point), I’m confident that I’m much like most of you: in spite of being retired, I’m overscheduled, overworked, overtaxed, underpaid, underappreciated and misunderstood. Now, it sounds like I’m having the biggest pity party ever given, and maybe I am. The thing is, I’m responsible for the state I’m in. I could do less, take more time and not feel I have to fill every waking moment with activity. This insight was driven home today at the last of the Trinity Episcopalian Church’s Wednesday Lenten services. Linda Moore, pastor of Buckhall UMC, delivered the homily. She spoke of how we fail to take time to just sit and be still in the midst of our daily routine. She had a wonderful illustration in which she put a water glass in a basin and poured water into it. As the water overflowed the glass into the basis, she said that we need to be filled with God’s love, which God pours freely into our lives, until that love and that mercy and that grace overflows from us so that others may be filled.

This message hit me right between the eyes. I need, among other people, to just sit and listen for the “still small” voice of God. I plan to set aside fifteen minutes each day to do so, set a timer and see what happens. I think what will happen will be very very good indeed. Maybe you’d like to join me in this conscious act of being still, if you’re not already doing something like it. God knows we need it, our church needs it, our community needs it, and a lost and dying world needs it most of all.