From text messages to no-calls.

I thought about how as time changes and evolves, communications change too. Not only does our environment changes, as far as technology is concerned, but it also changes in our relationships.

I remember when my husband and I were getting to know each other. Sometimes we used text messages (there were many of those), at other times, phone calls, and then we went out and shared time face to face.

In the beginning, we discussed topics about our tastes, knowing our life stories, and what we liked. Today, having been married for years, and especially during this time of quarantine due to the Covid-19 pandemic, my cell phone has almost no registered calls to his number, because we are together all the time and there is no need to call us.

We already have a story together and can refer to it in our conversations. Often, just by looking at the expressions on my face, he already knows what I’m thinking.

Let’s think about our relationship with God. At first, we find it difficult to hear God’s voice. We find ourselves in that stage where we are knowing about each other and through the Scriptures, prayer, and biblical studies and preaching, we are knowing who God is, what is his way of acting, his attributes, his nature. But He already knows everything about us. We have these little encounters with Him as we pray with passionate faith, curious about this new life and longing for more, like those text messages.

But our spiritual life must evolve as we cultivate our relationship with God. Later on, we may see God in life’s circumstances and we may perceive his direction when we read the Bible, and we see promises that we can hold on to in difficult times, we notice His advice that gives us direction and we start asking for help from the Holy Spirit as we learn his commandments for our lives. We learn that we need obedience in order to live a better life. By this time, it already looks more like phone calls.

But time flies, and we are already having a history, from the moment we gave our lives to the Lord and everything we have lived until we get to where we are today. We can see that God has brought us this far. So far his grace and fidelity have accompanied us. We can hear the voice of God in the small things that we do every day, or in every situation that arises during the day. We can hear his voice in praise, or in a quiet whisper in our ears.

Perhaps at first, we were very dependent on others helping us distinguish the voice of God. Already today, we can help others to enjoy the blessing of hearing his voice in their lives.

For our earthly body, where sin dwells but no longer dominates us, we do not have a face-to-face relationship with Him, we will fail him, and sometimes, as in a marriage, we will have no desire to speak, but his love is unconditional, and never let us. Then we return to take back what brings us the joy and peace that by his grace we have received.

Let us pray to the Lord giving thanks for his presence in our lives even when we are not aware of it. Let us present our lives longing to hear his voice every day and give thanks for the times we have listened to him.