God Whispers in the Wings
Day 32
Buechner shares his understanding of how God “speaks”.
“I'm better than I used to be, but far from well. The journey continues; I do what I can. The great problem is to try to live in the present, not the past, not the future, but in the now. The trees are waving outside in the breeze, an emblem of what I try to do now, try to notice that there are trees. They're waving right now. Try to bless your demons and let them go away. Demons, anxiety, desire, things you never did, let them go and go away and think about things you did do. Try to let go and let God, that wonderful old slogan. And to listen for God, that still, small voice, so still that maybe sometimes you wonder if there's any God there at all. I wish God would talk sometimes so I could hear him. I wish, as Woody Allen wonderfully jokes, that some-times he'd just clear his throat. But just enough whispers in the wings, the strange coincidence, the miraculous happenstance, the right saint coming by at the right time, to me means that the stillness of God is the stillness he has to preserve, because if he were to speak, it'd blow everything sky high.
“Shakespeare can't enter Hamlet, Rembrandt can't enter a canvas, except in the terms of the canvas or the play. But Shakespeare can enter the play by writing it, by putting himself into characters, and in this way Rembrandt also can enter his canvases by way of using his brush and imagination. So too the way God can deal with the world is elusively, whispers in the wings, subtly, suggestively, never coercing, just waving like the trees in time. So I try to listen for that.”
Frederick Buechner, The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, pp105-106
To help you reflect…
“….the strange coincidence, the miraculous happenstance, the right saint coming by at the right time…”
Which of these have you encountered in your life? What might God have been whispering in the wings?
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