My Father’s Voice
I cannot watch the soldier homecomings on the news without tears. They replay the homecomings of my own father who traveled many times on temporary duty all over the world in the Air Force. I have a few early memories of being allowed to ride out to the flight line on base (a place normally off-limits to families) and watch the huge planes thunder in and land, taxi to the hangar and then go silent. The waiting for the doors and hatches to open and the customs and order procedures would seem to take hours before the parade of identical green fatigues would begin. From a distance each one could have been our Daddy, but only one was the right one. I would focus on one only to realize as the men got closer that the one I focused on was too tall or too short or too slim. Another one had glasses or the nose wasn’t just right. It was like one of those puzzles in the comic section where you have to find the differences in the consecutive similar pictures.
Daddy had a distinctive gait that gave him away as he plodded closer in his heavy black boots. When he got close enough to speak to us, I knew exactly. The voice and the smile belonged only to him. When he gathered us all up in his arms, the wait was certainly worth it. He was home. His presence was better than a picture or a letter or a recording or even a gift. It was dinner with him at the table and helping him unpack his surprises. My brother and I (and later my sister too) would fall asleep that night to the comforting sound of his voice in the other room as he related his adventures and caught up on mother’s versions of our own. Their blended murmur of conversation was the sound track that returned our lives to the daily patterns we had missed for weeks, sometimes months. In the years after I left home for college, career and marriage, my father would rarely initiate a call, but his voice would chime in behind my mother’s with a comic insert into her conversation as he passed through the kitchen on his way to some farm chore. Then it was a reassurance, a reminder that I was still on his mind.
Our Heavenly Father’s voice should also be distinctive to us. We should know it better than any other. Jesus discussed the importance of this relationship in John 10:27 as He dealt with the Jews who asked for a confirmation of His identity. He said, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me”. In other words, we recognize those who have become close. Even a computer program can learn a person’s intonation and voice characteristics after a while. Do we spend enough time with God to know what He’s saying to us? Or have we dulled our spiritual ears with the clamor of media and business and drowned Him out? Revelations chapters two and three has a great deal to say about our willingness to hear from God. The consequences could be serious if we don’t.
It always bothered me as a teacher when I couldn’t get to a student’s question right away because I knew that it took courage to ask at all. After a few months with a certain class, I could often tell who was asking while my back was turned to help someone else. If I was careful, I could manage their impatience with the right response. Those moments together working on a paper or a piece of scenery brought special insights to our relationship— for them, for me. The Father is waiting to respond to our questions with eternal insights of much greater consequence. Are we listening?
Lord, I’m a talker and I’ll admit I’m not very good at the listening part of relationships. I need your help with that.
