Real Hope: Sovereign GodParaugs

THE NEXT VOICE I HEAR...

A lifetime ago now, I shared a flat with an audio engineer who was slowly losing his hearing. Helping musicians record their music was his life’s purpose. And now he was facing not just the loss of his job – but his vocation. His calling. 

As he grappled with committing to memory the increasingly distant sounds he loved – music, the beach break, his mum’s Sunday night phone calls – he asked me why God wasn’t showing up for him? Is He even there? 

A few months back, I met my friend at an airport. He is now an architect. A very good one. We leapfrogged through the decades with him reading my lips and me listening to a computer-generated voice crackling through his computer. We laughed a lot and cried a little. 

As I prepared to board my flight, he shared today’s Bible passage.

‘I don’t live in my memories of sound these days,’ he said. ‘I live in anticipation of God’s voice being the next sound I hear.’ My friend still misses the sound of the ocean, never heard his wife’s vows on their wedding day, or his twin boys’ first fumbling words. Yet, gloriously, in the quiet of his world, he hears the voice of God. 

If our Father’s voice is hard to hear at times, know this; He is no less Sovereign. Or near. 

written by DWAYNE JEFFRIES