A couple of weeks ago, my family and I were attending a church service. At this particular church, they have one service a month were the entire family comes together and sits with their entire church family and worships God together. While looking at the large video screen positioned just left of the stage (they meet in the commons area of a local junior high school) with beautiful backgrounds of crosses floating behind the words of the praise song we lifted to our Lord, my almost five year old (I was holding her in my arms so that she could see over the people standing in front of us) turns her head and looks me straight in the eye and asked in a reverent whisper, "Daddy, does God hear us sing?" I fought back tears because of the beauty of the moment, just recounting the story now brings tears to my eyes. I was able to look into her beautiful brown eyes, while holding back those tears, and say with assurance in my voice, "Yes baby...He hears it."
Have you ever stopped and pondered this fact? I know that there are many people that do not believe that God hears us as we pray or scream due to whatever pain we may have in our lives, but I do. And because I do believe that He hears us, I also have my moments of complete awe because of this simple fact....God hears us...God listens...God cares. I have heard many sermons on the different "common themes" that weave their way through scripture. But the common thread that I tend to hold tightly to is this...LOVE. You see: God loved us enough to create us. God loved us enough to drive us out of the garden. God loved us enough to save us from ourselves. God loved us enough to put us into slavery. God loved us enough to provide us a new home. God loved us enough to send his messengers and leaders to us. God loved us enough to send us THE MESSAGE. God loved us enough to allow that MESSAGE to die on a cross so that our line of communication could then be made complete. We can go straight to Him. We no longer have to pay for a temple priest to take our sacrifice and offer it up to God on our behalf. We can now enter into the presence of the God of All ourselves. That fact humbles me. That fact makes me want to fall to knees and get as flat on the ground as I can and let Him know that I am not worthy of such an audience. But the God that loves, picks me up and dusts me off and looks me in the eyes and says, "Yes baby...I hear you".
AMEN
