Many of us, probably more than once, have begged God for a sign. Maybe we’ve even tried to bargain with God. We ready ourselves with a string of promises meant to rope God into action. We assume it’s a spiritual quid pro quo—God does His part, we do ours. So, we promise God a renewed commitment or assign Him the rights to our firstborn, if only He would show up in some indisputable way. If He rescues us from financial disaster, we’ll be more generous. If He helps us pass that test, we’ll tell everyone how good He is. If He ensures that we land the perfect job soon, we’ll promise to one day become a missionary to Borneo.
But God is always working even when it seems like He’s not. And He’s always speaking. He doesn’t have to be cajoled or pressured into communicating. He is there and He is not silent. And when asking if God speaks, we may also stumble onto an equally important question: are we listening?
Maybe God’s newness is always all around us waiting to be enjoyed. Not only does God create something new in us when we place our faith in Jesus, but He also opens up a whole new world before us. We’ve been ushered into a new existence! And God is with us to help us live in this new creation.
In Sunday school, we plastered Bible characters onto flannel boards and sang This Is My Father’s World accompanied by a half-tuned, hand-me-down piano. And our teachers suggested that being good enough to get into heaven comes mostly by trying exceptionally hard to behave yourself.
I wouldn’t expect elementary-aged kids to have the theological acumen to grasp biblical nuances. But from my vantage point of years past Sunday school, I now see glaring omissions of truths I should have heard even as a child. Simply put, some things got left out—some very important things.
My dad worked his way up the ladder in the legal profession. First, he was an attorney, then a district attorney, then a Superior Court judge, with a brief stint in the Georgia House of Representatives in between all that. In his early days as an attorney, I was along for the ride one day when he met with a client who had hired my dad to represent him.
Now out on bail, the man had been arrested and charged with making moonshine. I barely knew what moonshine was, just that it was scandalous and that it looked and smelled like turpentine. And I’d never seen a real moonshine still until that day.