The Whisper of God

If this season teaches us anything, it is that our eyes ache for beauty. In Maryland, spring is a feast of flowers and blooming trees.  I'm always shocked at the constant loveliness of this month, with tulips and cherry blossoms and dogwood, forsythia and azaleas. It's hard to feel anything but awe when surrounded by such lavish loveliness.

Then I got a phone call from a friend.  In my eyes, this woman is the equivalent of spring any day of the year. Her light brave spirit and easy laugh are contagious. Today however, she called to tell about her cousin's child, a four month old facing a possible tracheotomy on Friday and a lifetime of being paralyzed from the neck down. Facing the foot of the cross on a daily basis with her own daughter's chronic and potentially lethal condition that requires daily monitoring and nightly vigils, my friend knew there was only one source of comfort, one source of strength and healing. So she was asking people to pray.

My friend is one of those people who pours everything out.  She also has a wicked sense of humor that keeps anyone from feeling crushed by sorrow. When faced with my own son's pending open heart surgery, she came to the hospital bearing hot chocolate.  She'd not seen Paul before.  Peering down at him in his isolet with the IV and the feeding tube up his nose, she quipped, "Wow! He's Down Syndrome hot!"  I had to clean up my hot cocoa.

Sure enough, she told her cousin, "You can do this.  I know you can do this." Her cousin asked why my friend knew. "Because you're not lazier than me." and the blessed laughter washed over the conversation for a moment.

I must learn never to drink diet coke when she calls, it's hard on my nasal passages.  She remains a willing pitcher pouring out God's love through the grace of good humor.

As we talked, she told me the story of how she'd quasi-adopted a child in her apartment complex by providing a place after school for a meal, homework help and comfort while the mother worked.  It was the type of constant but seemingly random kindness that mostly goes unreported on the news and Internet. It isn't random, it's wilful cooperation with God's grace.

The whispers of God were revealed in these moments of kindness, of beauty, of prayer, of diligence and they go on every day in countless homes, in countless hearts.  These whispers are greater than the noise and bluster and violence and wrath that pours forth on a daily basis from the news whatever the source.  God waits to be discovered in all those places where the ordinariness of love is the norm.  God is in the details of being willing to submit to the rigors of this world when quitting or running away or pulling back would be seemingly easier. And the world practically sings with this sort of strong truth (especially in Spring), just as surely as flowers sprouted in between the rocks despite the presence of the rocks. 

So please pray for my friend's cousin and her family, they need to feel the presence of God.