The sudden song of the bird startled the dogs and made me jump. I was on our back porch and the bird was perched in a tree branch about ten feet away, hidden from view. As I sat there distracted from the task at hand, an interesting thing happened. From several houses away, another bird answered with the same plaintive cry; then farther away another answered, and then finally a fourth could be heard a long way in the distance. Was it an echo? No way, not in the wind and the trees in our neighborhood. It was the response of other birds, answering the sad cry of “my” bird with an identical songs of their own.

    I’ve been like the bird that startled me. I’ve given off a plaintive cry toward heaven, hoping against hope that God would hear and respond. I didn’t want him to “place something in my heart” or “bring me to a place of conviction.” I wanted to hear God’s voice audibly answer my cry. It wasn’t a lack of faith that drove my desire during these times, but quite the opposite. I was facing a spiritual dilemma and needed guidance, reassurance, hope, and confidence.

    I took great comfort in those times of wrestling that God’s greatest servants longed for the same kind of comfort. “Show yourself to me if I am going to lead these people,” Moses audaciously demanded of God. “Where are you?” “Why will you not answer me?” and many similar sentiments ring out from the voices of the prophets and are given us to use in the collection of the Psalms.

    That deep longing for an answer, coupled with a heartfelt anguish of “Will he ever answer?” are neither new nor wrong. God’s Word, the example of his greatest servants, and the Bible’s greatest songs help us know this. So what do we do with that longing and that anguish?

    We verbalize it! We pray it with others and let the Holy Spirit bring it to God. We voice it to our Father before we share in the church assembly. We speak it softly to Jesus before we read the Scriptures. Then we listen.

    So often God’s answers sound very much like the muffled echo of our own voice. We feel like our prayers never make it above celing level. But, if we listen carefully, we realize that what we hear is more than the reverberation of our own cry. Part of what seems to be echo is a reminder from godly servants who have gone before; others have voiced our heart’s longing, too, and God has answered them. Sometimes what seems to be the echo of our own voice is a shared chorus; others around us who share a similar longing — in joining our voices together and listening to each other God speaks to us through his Spirit in songs, in Scripture, in a well-timed word or deed. And sometimes what seems to be the echo of our own voice is God answering us in ways we often miss, neglect, or mistrust.

“Where are you?” “Why will you not answer me?”

    The answers I have craved from God have come in a variety of ways and always at his timing and from the distance he has chosen to respond — yet I have never received it in that “heavenly voice” that characterizes movies where God speaks. In my experience, God has refused to be a caricature of himself and chosen his own sovereign ways to respond. But, he has answered! Sometimes it seemed at first like the echo of my own voice. Other times it came in surprising and undeniable ways. Still other times, the Father chose a much more subtle way to answer my cry. But, he answered! So in that next “dark night of the soul” when my heart is filled with anguished longing, I will cry out ... and then listen ... and trust that my answer is on the wing and I will not give up when all I seem to hear is the echo of my own voice.

“Go out and stand before me on the mountain,” the LORD told him. And as Elijah stood there, the LORD passed by, and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper. (1 Kings 19:11-12 NLT)