Listen to Your Life
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
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In January of 1993 I was browsing in the Cokesbury Bookstore in Charlotte. I was 36 years old – old enough to have experienced some ups and downs, young enough that I hoped to have a bit more life ahead of me than behind me. I came across a collection of daily meditations by one of my favorite authors, Frederick Buechner. The first sentence stuck in my mind and often reminds me of its wisdom. “Listen to your life.”
“Listen to your life,” Buechner wrote, “There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it.”
I have spent the years since then pondering those words, living those words, and experiencing the truth of those words.
Recently I met with a son who was planning a combined memorial service for his mother who died last year in the pandemic, and his father who died recently. I explained to him that when I preach a memorial service or funeral, I see my primary job as learning about the entire life of the deceased and striving to convey some meaning in the context of Christian faith.
Certainly, my efforts are insufficient to fully capture the meaning of another person’s life. Each of our lives is made meaningful in its own unique way as God works in and through each person. The challenge of my preaching task is to discover the thread of God’s presence woven daily into the tapestry of an entire life. I ask questions and listen carefully.
Isn’t the challenge of each of our lives to discover where and how God is present throughout our days?
Listen to your life.
We discover God’s presence in the ordinary moments of our days, writes Buechner. “If God speaks anywhere, it is into our personal lives that he speaks.” That’s why we listen to our lives. What is God saying to you and to me in the moments of our days?
Buechner goes on, “the reason that his words are impossible to capture in human language is of course that they are ultimately always incarnate words. . . fleshed out in the everydayness no less than in the crises of our own experience.” God’s words are incarnate words that are fleshed out in our ordinary moments. We must listen, attend to the movement of God’s spirit in and through each moment. Incarnate words call for a different kind of listening.
We listen to our lives, sometimes in the moments as they happen, but usually by remembering the moments of our past. Where was God in your remembered moments? How was God’s Spirit working in and through you, slowly transforming you to be more of who God created you to be, leading you, guiding you, comforting you, sustaining you, healing you. This kind of listening is best done after the moment has passed. Long after.
So, don’t be afraid to listen, even when listening is painful, for in the listening we find healing, in the listening we find meaning, in the listening we recognize God’s presence with us. “Listen to your life.” Buechner wrote, “See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. . . because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
Greg Smith
Director of Legacy Ministry