A Voice From Above

Before he became a truck driver, my dad flew a spray plane.  Most people called him a “crop duster,” but he preferred “aerial applicator.”  

Back in those days before GPS, someone would have to drive to the field where the job was to be done to assist him in lining up correctly for each pass through the field.  

If the terrain was flat enough, as most of it was, each swath was measured by counting off the correct number of “dings” in the special hubcap he had fitted on the pickup.  A large day-glo orange flag was mounted behind the cab. Occasionally, a hilly field would require a flagger at both ends; one of us (me) on foot, stepping off each swath as he flew overhead.

The girl he’d hired to drive the truck was a few years older.  I didn’t have my driver’s license yet, so it was my job to help her navigate to the fields using the plat books we carried with us as well as to be the on-foot flagger when necessary. 

We were both pretty good at reading maps, but once in a while we would get lost on our way to the field.  That is when Dad would come on over the CB radio and yell at us to get our asses over to the right place.  Spray planes use a lot of fuel when they’re fully loaded, so it made him mad to waste it flying around while we drove around the wrong section like a couple of idiots.  He got paid so much per acre, so that fuel cost came out of his pocket, not the farmer’s.

You might think we would be glad to get directions from Dad; after all, he had the best view from the air.  I can tell you that this was definitely not the case, though, because we had so much trouble understanding him.  The noise from the airplane combined with the static of those radios made it nearly impossible to figure out what he was saying.  If we asked him to repeat too many times, he would yell at us to “listen the first time, dammit!”  If we took a guess and then drove in the wrong direction, he would yell at us to “pay attention!”  So, you can see why we girls would argue with one another over who had to answer the radio.  I usually lost that “because he’s your dad.”

Contrast that image with our reading from 1 Samuel 3 last week. The Lord is calling Samuel’s name.  It never occurs to Samuel that the Lord would be calling him. Since it’s his job to assist old Eli, who is sleeping nearby, Samuel makes a logical assumption that it’s Eli who is calling and responds accordingly.

Now, another thing that would raise my dad’s ire, besides wasting fuel, was being awakened from a nap.  Unless it was a windy day, he was flying by the time the sun was rising, so after-lunch naps were part of his daily routine.  And you did not want to be the one who had to wake him up if someone was there to see him or he had a phone call.  I avoided that like I did answering the radio.

So, I am especially impressed with Eli’s patience as Samuel wakes him up not once, but three times.  The first two times, Eli gently tells the boy to go back and lie down.  The third time this happens, it dawns on Eli that the voice Samuel is hearing must be the Lord’s. 

Notice it isn’t just Eli who is patient in this story, either.  There’s nothing to indicate that God is frustrated or angry with either of these guys.  God simply repeats, “Samuel, Samuel.”  This is another good place to play that little game I like to call, ‘Things God Does Not Say.’  God doesn’t say, “Whatsa matter, you got somethin in yer ears?”  God doesn’t say, “Well, if you had just listened to me the first time…”  God doesn’t say, “Read my lips…” God doesn't say "I'm not going to tell you again..."

With gentle, patient persistence, God eventually gets the message across.  Even today, through all the noise and static of our lives God still speaks.  Sometimes, like Samuel, we just don’t recognize the voice and we need someone else, like Eli, to help us to hear.  That’s one of the reasons we need to be in community with other Christians, so that we aren’t misled by what we think we hear on our own. 

Selective hearing is another story.  We all know how people will tune out what they don’t want to hear.  Spouses accuse one another of it all the time and parents of teenagers are well-acquainted with it.  Caller ID is a form of that.  I like it because it allows me to refuse to answer a call if I don’t recognize the number displayed…or if it’s someone I simply don’t want to talk to.

God’s way of dealing with people who hear but refuse to listen is different.  One case involves a really big fish, but I'll save that one for another day.

Toward Better Vision in 2012

Not my house, but it's similar.  More old houses.

You can’t see it, but I can.  When you pull into the driveway, there’s a big, white two-story house on the left.  Tall trees form a border to the west and the north.  To the right of the house is the chicken house.  It has a little square door on the front for just the chickens to use with a ramp leading up to it.  East of the driveway is a smaller, one-story house.  No one lives in it, but for some reason there’s one old doll that someone left just lying in the middle of the hard, linoleum floor.

To the east of the smaller house is the corn crib, where the diesel John Deere tractor is parked.  It’s louder than the other tractor when it runs. Beyond the corn crib is the hog shed, where the pink baby pigs live. They squeal if you pick them up. Nearby is the long cattle shed. The cattle are standing in a row next to the wooden feed bunks, waiting for their silage. There’s another small shed where a cow with an eye infection is being kept by herself. 

Back further in the trees to the north of the chicken house is a rusty old wagon that’s fun to climb around on, but some of the jagged metal edges are sharp.  Squirrels run around, on the ground and in the branches up above.  If you piled some acorns up at the base of one of the trees and came back the next day, they would be gone.

Coming home from Decorah this past summer with my daughter, we stopped at that driveway.  I could see all those things, but she could see none of them, because they aren’t there anymore.  I saw them with my 3 and 4 year-old eyes, on the farm where we lived before I was old enough to go to school.  But sitting in the car at that empty place that day, it was almost hard to believe those things had been real. 

For you or my daughter to believe that they were real requires faith.  Hopefully you both know me well enough that you aren’t suspicious of what I say.  Our relationship enables you to trust that I wouldn’t try to trick you or deceive you.  You also have to trust that I’m not hallucinating or under the influence of mind-altering drugs.  I could see where you might be tempted to think that if I said in my story that I became a chicken and flew over the trees, because everyone knows chickens can’t fly that high. 

5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Revelation 21.5

I’ll be the first to admit, that’s not always a statement I find easy to believe when I hear it.   “See” he says, but often I don’t.  Only with faith and trust is it possible.  Unlike my farm memories, what Jesus is talking about is yet to come, not the past.  He must have known how hard it would be for us; otherwise there would be no need to say anything about the trustworthiness of his words.  Isn’t that what we do if we sense skepticism in a listener?  “Trust me!” we urge them.  I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to trust what I can’t see.

We sang “Be Thou My Vision” in worship on New Year’s Day.  I am amazed that, as many times as I have sung or listened to this favorite hymn, I can still hear it in a different way (aside from the lyrics changes made in the ELW’s version).  In this hymn, I think we pray, not for our vision to be improved or made clearer and not for the fulfillment of our vision.  Rather, we pray that Christ BE our vision, because on our own, we can’t see what God has in mind.  Without the light of Christ for illumination, we see only what we want to see.

(v.1) Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart; 

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night, 

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

(v. 5) High King of Heaven, my victory won, 

May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, 

Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

It may never be more important to see through God’s eyes rather than our own as it is at this time in our congregation, as we prepare to call a new pastor.  We each have our own preconceived notions of what a pastor should be, of what the church should be.  But we are challenged to look not with our own eyes, but in prayer to trust in God’s vision, even if it doesn’t quite match up with what we were expecting ourselves.

As I will readily confess, the greatest challenge for me is to apply that to my own life; to trust what I cannot see is always a struggle, but I find encouragement in these words from Paul:

As it is written ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
          nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared 

for those who love him’—  1 Cor 2:9