Hearing God
“As we live in this Advent season, awaiting the Lord’s coming, we might examine our hearts to see if they are truly open. Are we open to God speaking to us in the language of everyday events? Are we willing to hear God’s warnings and accept God’s guidance, or are we happier to justify our selfish behaviors and chart our own way in life? May the Lord find in us hearts open and ready to receive him, whenever and however he chooses to come to us.”—Br. David Vryhof, “Brother, Give us a Word,” Society of Saint John the Evangelist, December 10th, 2018, a daily email sent to friends and followers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, a religious order for men in the Episcopal/Anglican Church. www.ssje.org.
Discernment is our daily question. Are we following our will or God’s will? Are we listening to God, or are we listening to ourselves and what promotes ourselves and our own self-interest? My experience is it is not easy to know. I have learned to listen cautiously to those who tell us they know exactly what we are to do. I usually do not know if I am doing God’s will until much later.
So, what do we do? First, we try to put ourselves in position to hear God’s will. This means being silent, practicing spiritual exercises, being in thin places where the spiritual and physical world seem to have only a thin membrane between them, being in community with other spiritual seekers who share experiences, studying scripture and stories of those before us in our own religious traditions, worshiping in community. When I feel or know the fruit of the spirit after discernment, this is a sign that the Christ is guiding us within the Holy Spirit, the God of our understanding. (Galatians 5:22: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.)
This is not a walk we do alone. Instead, we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses before us who are now with us to guide us.
In 1994, sixty-six Arkansas Episcopal women wrote about this as they contributed meditations on the common Sunday lectionary scripture readings for years A, B, and C. It was a project of the Board of the Episcopal Church Women of the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas. This initial project was before the day of email, so everything was done by phone calls and mail. Our theme came out of John 4:1-42, which is about a Samaritan woman encountering Jesus at a well. She was the first person in John’s gospel where Jesus revealed he was the Christ. The book’s title, Surrounded by a Cloud of Witnesses, came from the proper preface for All Saints Day used at the Eucharist of a funeral of a dear friend, Martha Lyford, who died much too early in 1982.
The present ECW president, Kaki Roberts, was instrumental in making this happen at the time, as well as board member Karen McClard. Andrea McMillin produced unique artwork and helped with publishing. I was the editor and took a six-month sabbatical from my medical practice to make this happen. At every step, we were “surrounded by a cloud of witnesses,” from being at Martha’s funeral to the writing, editing, publishing, and multiple joint book signings and readings by the authors. We had two printings of the book and raised over $10,000, which became seed money for the ECW foundation in Arkansas. Unfortunately, the book is out of print, so it is appropriate that now there is another edition, spearheaded by the Rev. Marti Darby, who edited Surrounded by a Cloud of Witnesses II.
