THE END?
Are you still listening?
Do you have time for one last story?
Once upon a time, Man and Woman lived in a wonderful garden with the God who had created them. Every day they would walk with Him through their amazing world. His voice, the voice that had called everything they knew into being, was the only voice in their world. But one day they met a serpent, and the serpent brought with it another voice; a voice that set itself against the Creator.
“He told us that it was good,” said the Man and the Woman.
“But could it be better?” asked the serpent.
“He has given us everything that we need,” said the Man and Woman.
“Are you sure?” asked the serpent.
The Man and Woman had to choose who to believe, and they made a bad choice. Since that time, men and women have found that the voice of God is now just one voice amongst the many.
But the story doesn't end there. Many years passed and then there was a man who heard God calling his name. This man had the same choice as the Man and the Woman. Would he listen or not?
“What do you want of me?” asked Abram.
“I want you to go,” replied God. Abram went, and in doing so he became a different person. He became Abraham.
In the years that followed, there were men and women who listened to the voice of God, and men and women who listened to other voices.
Eventually along came one who made his whole life revolve around listening to the voice of God. He had a different name for God, however. He called Him 'Father'. Everywhere that this man walked, he made sure that he was walking with his Father. In the wilderness; by the lake in Galilee; on the Temple Mount; in a garden called Gethsemane and on a hill called Golgotha, wherever he went, his Father's voice was the only voice He listened to. He said, “I can do nothing except what I see my Father doing.”
Jesus taught his followers that to have seen him was to have seen the Father, and by extension, that to have heard him was to have heard the Father. One day Jesus had to leave his followers, but he didn't leave them alone. He sent them the Comforter. Jesus, the God With Us, sent the Holy Spirit, the God In Us. To this very day, wherever the followers of Jesus go, God goes with them, and like the Man and Woman at the beginning of the story they can hear God, if they listen carefully, because they carry the voice of God with them.
Listen. The story goes on.