Echoes

When I got up this morning I heard the Lord speak to me. I didn’t audibly hear His voice the way I hear my wife call my name, but I heard Him still. I heard Him while I was sitting on the front porch drinking my Mardi Gras King Cake flavored Community coffee. I haven’t bought a single roll of toilet paper, but I’m pretty sure I’ve purchased every bag of this coffee sold in the Shoals, and I am hoarding this once a year blend. In less than a week drinking coffee on the front porch has become my morning ritual. It’s my quiet time alone with the Lord to clear my head, cleanse my heart, and seek His guidance.

Levi was enjoying his favorite morning ritual — sniffing around every square inch of the yard exploring — while dozens of songbirds provided the soundtrack for the sunrise. As the light got brighter, I could see some of the most beautifully colored birds hopping around the yard, and flying from branch to branch, and that is when I heard Him speak. I heard Him speaking to me through the writings of His disciple Matthew, which writings I long ago “hid in my heart” (Psalm 119:11). Sitting and watching the barn swallows, warblers, robins, and cardinals these words flooded my mind:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Matthew 6:25-27).

He spoke those words to me the same way my Grandaddy Richard still speaks to me, though he’s been gone close to two decades now. Whenever I’d walk out the door he would say to me, “Keep it between the lines.” I haven’t heard his voice in far too long, but as long as my memory functions properly I’ll hear him saying that. I heard Him the same way I still hear my Grandaddy Sam, who died when I was only eight years old, saying “toodlee doodlee” when you would leave his house. Sitting here just north of forty I cherish the fact that both my grandfathers had such unique ways of saying goodbye. They aren’t with me physically, and I can’t hear them audibly, but they are never far from me. In the drawer of my desk right now, not three inches from my elbows as I type this, is the letter opener, engraved with the name “Richard Britton,” that he used to open his mail. Next to it is the Alcoholics Anonymous medallion he was given to celebrate his twentieth year of sobriety. Sitting on the shelf in the closet to my right is Grandaddy Sam’s “good hat” (which I believe is known as a Trilby) and his favorite hat…a 1984 Atlanta Braves baseball cap. Though long gone, there are times I feel closer to them than people who are literally within my reach. I spent a lot of time listening to those two men, both of whom are long gone, but I can still hear them in my heart as clearly as if they were sitting here with me.

For twenty-three years I’ve tried to spend as much time with the Lord as I can. I’m not interested in just knowing about Him or just being able to recite facts about Him. I want to know Him, so I spend all the time I can with Him. I spend time with Him in prayer, talking to Him, and He always listens. I spend time with Him through His word, and I always……I mostly…..well, I try very hard to listen. I spend as much time as I can with Him in His church because He manifests Himself in His body, the church. I’ve never audibly heard His voice or physically felt His touch or literally seen His face, but really, I have.

I have welled up with tearful gratitude as I listened to one of my shepherds tell me he loved me last week. “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

I have felt my crushing grief lifted when a beloved brother in Christ hugged me and said, “It’s going to be ok and I’ll be here for you until it is” at my mother in laws funeral. “Bear one another’s burdens and fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).

I have been reassured and encouraged that what I do does make a difference as I’ve seen smiling faces with open Bible taking notes while I teach or preach. “Be steadfast, unmovable and always abounding in the work of the Lord..knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).

After my heart had been shattered into a million pieces it was put back together and bonded with love by two dozen people who surrounded my fourteen foot kitchen table every Thursday night for Bible study and prayer. “I came to heal the brokenhearted” (Luke 4:18).

If Abel, who has been dead longer than anyone, can still speak to us (Hebrews 11:4), then certainly the Lord can too, and He does. He does in a million different ways in every language and in no language, so that none of us have an excuse for not hearing Him (Romans 1:20). “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Psalm 19:1-4).

No, He’s not here with me physically and audibly, but He will be the next time I gather with His people, whenever, wherever, and with however many of us there are, be it 100 or 50 or 10 or less. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am among them” (Matthew 18:20…I know this is slightly out of context, but the principle remains true). He was with me in all of those other times, and He was with me this morning, and if you will look for Him and listen for Him, you will find wherever you are right now, He is there with you too, even if it is just through this Facebook post. He is saying the same thing to you that He said to me while sitting on that little red bench in the cool morning air, “I will never leave you or forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). Before you scroll further, before you turn on the morning news, before you listen to what the armchair experts have to say today, why not listen to Him for a few minutes first? I assure you, if you listen to Him first it will change your perspective on what everyone else says next.

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?…Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:33-34). If you have ears then listen (Matthew 11:15).

Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.