He's not a soda pop machine

God has spoken once,

Twice I have heard this:

That power belongs to God.

Also to You, O Lord, belongs mercy.  Psalm 61:11-12

Sometimes the voice of God is loud and clear and requires obedience, Immediate without excuse.  And sometimes, it is not.  Sometimes, you kind of scrunch forward and squint, and think did I really hear that?

So on Sunday I was praying for the trumpet-loud clarity.  To hear God’s voice and know it was Him, mostly for Nicole, because she is at the wait moment of her life: 

My soul, wait silently for God alone,

For my expectation is from Him.

But also for me, because I am sitting next to her, waiting as well.  

And so I prayed and fasted three times and saw His power with yellow-flag clarity, whipping in the Wind.  Twice.  

And once, once. 

My soul, wait silently for God alone,

For my expectation is from Him.

I am still waiting.  For Him alone.  

Mercy.

Is He listening through the pebbled sprayed on foam ceiling above me?

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; I will trust in the LORD forever and ever.  I will praise You forever because You have done it, and in the presence of Your saints I will wait on Your name, for it is good.  Psalm 52:8-9

What has He done?

It.

He created the heavens and earth and declared it good.  And somehow in the midst of the bad and the ugly, my heart recognizes the good that is all encompassing: the pulse of life at the cellar level, the throb of particles in the molecular level, the ripples of energy through the spaces in between.  

The crooked smile of the kid reaching for the recyclable bit of trash under the purple Texas Ranger, “My teacher would be so proud of me,” and the piled up masses of rain clouds heaving silently over the rumbling freeway both promise hope in the dry desert of life.  

And as I wait, silently, in this slightly frayed Ramada Inn with the rattling refrigerator and the lingering hint of stale cigarettes and the ever-present and equally frayed Gideon’s Bible, I will praise His name.

I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; I will trust in the LORD forever and ever.