Dear Tom,
Several friends wrote yesterday about finding meaning in life’s events. Buechner writes that God speaks, but his words are impossible to capture in human language. He draws the analogy to the Hebrew language where the alphabet has no vowels. It is up to us to ferret out the words and fill in the vowels. God speaks, but we hear only what is meaningful to us. So it is up to us to use our faith and imagination to find the word’s meaning as it applies to our everyday lives.
Language varies also with tone. Words spoken in anger may have one meaning, where words spoken with a quiet and comforting tone may have a whole different meaning. In this regard, I suspect that God speaks in monotone. His words are always spoken in love. His voice is like a loving parent speaking to his/her child. The parent may speak sternly one time, with humor another time, or comforting a different time. But each voice conveys first and foremost a tone of love. A parent’s goal is to convey love in every word spoken to his/her child. Why should we expect that God would not aspire and succeed in using the same voice. It is only when we choose, like a child, to interpret the tone differently do we not hear the voice of unconditional love. When we hear the tone of love behind every event , then we begin to understand with clarity the event’s meaning.
Your Friend, Webb
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