The Voice

My feet take me across the counties of New York City, and everywhere they step I seek a Voice to give reason for the chaos, insight to confusion, concrete steps to despair, and kind words for disbelief. The Voice discovered can be the voice to explain. The faces of all I pass search my eyes for a hint, a shard of light to bring hope where darkness has strangled, suffocated, reduced a life to a rote unanswered question leading to apathy, and worse—a tenuous détente that knows not light or darkness, only gray shadows. The Voice leads me away from myself, and towards the pain inherent in place sharing. The Voice moves my steps to places that time has stopped, hearts pierced against inevitable abandonment, ready to break; the Voice sends me there in time to infuse that grain of ash, that reminder of my surrender, the fire that had consumed my claim on time and living, but now wholly given to Him who assures me I am known.
My greatest pursuit is the voice. Only the Voice can bring clarity to the blur, lift to the droop, a smile for sadness, or knowing to perplexity. In every moment of every day I can seek the voice, and so know my place, and feel His assurance. Where the Voice is, that’s where I belong, if not there, then I must turn to the sound by faith. Children always see the face of their Father (Matt 18); therefore humility, child like trust, and a dogged tenacity, ignite through a will that strives to hear it, and obey it when it calls me out of lethargy and into ambiguity. This week a young woman said these words, “I don’t want to wake up when I’m forty years old and realize that I had done nothing to make a difference in this world.” When we walk with God straining by faith to hear the voice, we can rest from striving and anxious longing, and know that if at our post long enough, and faith filled, we will hear unmistakable utterances from the other side. We stand in the cleft, and by us God races to His appointed hour, but never leaves us behind. Instead, He stops long enough to speak, and wills our will to follow. That moment we are suspended between fear and belief tests the metal of our moral courage, and shows us once again that it’s Him from first to last. We do not obey the Voice without His Spirit’s counsel and power.