Whisper of God

Although I have been consistently writing the blog entries since Father Paul left, I would like to remind all our readers that this is the St. Paul's Cathedral 20s/30s group blog, not the A. Peter Snodgrass blog. I invite anyone who would like to post something to email it to me or Jason Elliott and we'll happily put it on for you. With that said, here is a lovely and profound entry from our own Andrea Szymanski.

A. Peter Snodgrass


Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "Let us be silent that we may hear the whisper of God." (I'm not that well read. It was stitched on a cross-stitch, but nonetheless...) When I saw it I had one of those Eureka! moments, an epiphany of great import. Words on a cross-stitch from a poet spoke to me, and those words left a deep imprint upon my soul.

I think it's always assumed that because God is so great, so profoundly awesome (in the traditional sense of the word as opposed to the less inspiring, modern vernacular) that God is bombastic and loud; that His influence upon us is terrible and grand, but I believe that God, who has made things as wondrous and multi-hued as sunsets and fields of wildflowers, is much subtler than that. God's influence is not bombastic. More often it is the voice in the back of one's head saying, "Perhaps, you should do this..." And because He loves us, God gives us a choice. "Yes, perhaps we should do this, but I think I'll choose this instead..."

I believe that whisper of God, or conscience or whatever you choose to call it, was once so much easier for us to hear, before we, as a species, got too smart for our own good and created the chaos that surrounds us. We've gotten louder. Our lives, everything around us, have gotten louder and so we shout over the cacophony of sound and light and over-stimulation. It's hard to find peace and quiet in a world like that. We shout. God does not.

My personal challenge to myself, which came out of the retreat, was to hear God's voice more clearly. I know God is always with me and tries to help me to be the best possible version of myself. I wouldn't say that I've stopped listening to God but I would admit that He's harder to hear and that by making different choices I've strayed a bit from where God intended me to be. My challenge is to drown out the noise, put aside things that can wait, and to just stop and listen to God's whisper. It's always there. If you stop for a moment, I know you'll hear God, too. After all, he's always there, waiting for us to listen.

Andrea Szymanski