They come to all of us, these voices in the night. Oh, maybe not literally — not many of us hear anyone other than our own 2-year-old calling our name in the dark — but who hasn’t experienced the thought that wanders through the mind on the edge of sleep? Or maybe it’s the interesting idea that won’t go away, or the repeated request for help from some person or organization, the dream or the opportunity you can’t forget about, even though it seems preposterous. Or you have this niggling sense that you ought to come at things differently. We all, at times, hear voices in the night — calls on our heart and our abilities that may seem alien to where we are now, yet that remain compelling no matter how often we ignore them. Voices that call us by our own name, our truest name, that ask us to step up and be who we really are and do what really matters. We all hear voices in the night.
We don’t all notice this. Our lives are filled with many voices, and not nearly all of them are worth listening to. There is the gravitational pull of the voices we grew up with — parents, teachers, playmates, coaches, church — voices that tell us, maybe accurately and maybe not, about who we are and what kind of a world we live in. Some of what those voices tell us may need to be re-examined. Then there is the deluge of commercial voices: the advertising, the bombardment of messages about the good life and what it takes to have it, voices that come not from any concern for our well-being or serious reflection on the highest good, but from a canny assessment of what sells. Consume, consume, consume, shrieks our society; and it is hard to hear the deeper truth that we might need instead to offer.
And all too often we hear the voice of negativity and fear — the derisive skepticism that we could be anything special; the paralyzing certainty that the way things are is so entrenched we can’t possibly make
...approximately 1,159 words remaining. You are not logged in. Please see options at the top of this page to view complete sermon.
