The Words He Hears

A young man looks up one day. After not having looked up for a long time. And he sees God. And doesn’t understand. Why would God come to him after the life he’s led. There was nothing special about his life. And certainly nothing worth a visit. From God.

The young man has always believed in God – in an abstract sense. He’s believed that God is a universal power that exists somewhere beyond him, but one that he respects. Because it is the source of something he doesn’t understand and is always out of reach.

And now he’s seeing… Well, he isn’t seeing anything. Rather he is feeling a strange energy. As he sits up and watches a world opening in front of him. And around him. And he hears a voice that seems to come from… weird… it seems to come from his heart.

The young man never spent much time imagining what God would say if he ever heard God’s voice. But he is surprised by the words he’s hearing. Because if God were to come to him, the young man imagined that he would at least deliver a top secret message. Or whatever.

“You are loved,” the voice says. “Just trust in love. And me. And your direction. And understand that you are not alone.”

The young man doesn’t know what to do. He’s believed for so long that he is alone in this world. That if he is to survive, he will have to do so on his own. And so he has walked a straight line. Away from a world he doesn’t believe in, and into his own loneliness.

When the voice stops talking, the young man does the only thing he knows. He ignores the voice. Pretends that it doesn’t exist. Goes back to the world of hardship and survival that he he believes in. And he spends the rest of his life in that world.

This man’s life is a sad story. But luckily it doesn’t end here. No matter how many times our lives end here, they never really end. Here. Not even yesterday. When the young man – who had since become an old man – closed his eyes for the last time.

The story doesn’t end here for the same reason that all stories like it don’t end here. Because we live in a universe that is connected. A universe that has its own time. A universe that allows us to pass on the work. If we choose not to do it for ourselves.

Sometimes we pass the work to our children who come after us. Sometimes to our neighbors who live beside us. Sometimes to our brothers who live on the other side of the world. Brothers we may not even know. And sometimes to the trees that sway in the wind around us.

In the case of this young man who turned old, he passed the work on to a daughter who he raised. Who he loved so dearly. But who he ultimately disowned because one day she heard a voice and he told her it wasn’t real. But she listened to the voice anyway.

The old man was so sad to see his daughter believe in something that wasn’t real. Even as she skipped in a field. Planting seeds. Watering them. Watching them grow. And feeling the sun on her back. As she participated in a world. In which she danced.

When the old man died, yesterday, his daughter was on the other side of the world. Painting a picture of a young man who she understood that she had to paint. A young man who is speaking with God as he paints a picture. Of a world in which he listens. To the words he hears.

The girl will tell her children – in a few years – that while she didn’t find out for days that her father had died, a voice had woken her up on the day of his death. “You are loved,” the voice had said. “Just trust in love. And me. And your direction. And understand that you are not alone.”

It was her father. She knew it was her father. His voice was unmistakable.