We love to read and tell the stories of the way that God spoke to Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Jonah, and the rest of them. However, we do not often remind ourselves that before they were heroes of the faith, they were wanderers and wastrels, shepherds and stutterers, altar boys and mama's boys, small-time business folks and clumsy parents. Folks like us, pretty much. The difference is that they thought they heard the Voice and were foolish enough to say so and to act upon what they thought they heard.

We, however, claim that God speaks to us and then wait patiently in our pew for someone with a degree and a robe and a hospital parking pass to tell us what the Voice might be whispering to us deep inside. We pray for guidance and then worry about whether the voice we hear within is the Voice. We quote Saint Paul's admonition to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, and then tremble at the thought of acting on the counsel given to us in our hearts in the night.

Perhaps we are afraid that God does not regard us highly enough to speak to us anymore — a rather funny position to take for those who claim to be the children of God. Perhaps we are afraid that God no longer speaks to anyone much anymore or that we can no longer recognize the Voice. It could be that we are afraid that God does still speak and that we will hear and that the God of publicans and sinners and the scared and scurrilous will want to make something new in us as well.

I am convinced that the Voice that whispered us into being still whispers within us and all creation. I am dead certain of it sometimes, terrified of it at other times, longing for it at all times. The silence that so often seems to overcome me is more likely a matter of my not trusting my own ears than it is a matter of the Voice having gone suddenly, inexplicably silent.

Robert Benson, Between the Dreaming and the Coming True