The Sacred Echo by Margaret Feinberg

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been reading a book called the Sacred Echo
by Margaret Feinberg. Reading isn’t really the full verb I should be using here. More than reading I’ve been identifying, feeling, relating and experiencing the ideas about the voice of God expressed in this book. Margaret gives a very vulnerable look into what it really means to hear God’s voice calling out to us and reverberating in our lives. As I picked this book up, I quietly wondered where my thoughts were on the topic. I was once again grimly reminded of the distance I have in my heart to listening for God’s voice. I feel like for myself and most of my surrounding immediate community the topic of God’s voice and how he is speaking to us is dormant in our everyday language. It’s just not talked about very much.

As I got into the book, I felt like a lot of good things were said and then I got really excited. I realized she wasn’t spouting theories, she was telling stories. I LOVE stories. I love hearing about moments in time where a person becomes aware of something God was trying to speak to them. Nothing is more powerful. I don’t care who the speaker or writer is, no three point sermon or seven step book can ever compare to the stories that exist in the world around us of how God is on the move in the hearts of his children. Reading on, I found that not all of the stories were of the EPIC, “how is that possible!?” sort. There were stories of clarity and also stories of confusion. It was definitely a book to identify with. There are times when I feel like the Sacred Echo of God’s voice is booming and other times when the cavern of life is frighteningly silent. In the midst of all of that we have an opportunity to learn about and draw near to our Creator. We also learn a lot about ourselves. As Margaret continued to unpack her thoughts about the Sacred Echo coupled with her stories, she reached a great balance of starting a dialogue about God’s voice and allowing God’s voice to speak through the stories she was writing. I felt some significant moments in this book where I wasn’t just reading about God’s voice…I was hearing it.

This brings me full circle to what I ended with in the first paragraph of this entry. As I neared the last few chapters in this book, I was confronted with a few things. In her chapter entitled, “Bring Them to Me” my heart was broken for the hurting people in the stories she told. They reminded me of people I know in my own life that live with a great deal of pain everyday. My heart also leapt for those in her stories that received the kind of healing from God that would be considered impossible even by a great many of us Jesus followers in today’s day and age. The final thing I was confronted with was already coming to the forefront of my mind even before I arrived there in the book. What has died in me that caused this idea of the Sacred Echo to be such a dormant part of my everyday life? As I read through her chapter, “You Are Not Alone” I was brought to the question of my past. What has happened in my life that would cause me to draw a line in the sand with God, self-protecting from being let down? What could have occurred that would cause me to have learned to hedge my bets when it comes to faith? Margaret talked about how these lines we’ve drawn can usually be traced back to a moment where we felt like our prayers or needs were met with an unsettling silence from the One who loves us more than we know. I don’t pretend to believe that this question can be answered by one huge incident in my life but I like the prayer she introduced at the end of that chapter, “Show me the lines I’ve drawn with You. I don’t want to be isolated from You or anyone else.” Something deep inside my heart stands up when I read words like that. Something very soulful and spiritual wants to run to God and just be alive. I want to begin praying this prayer and unraveling where I’ve lost that childlike ability to come before God with everything.

I know of one line I’ve drawn right off the bat. I didn’t have to ponder very long to remember this. For over a decade, I prayed for the salvation of an individual that I’m very close with. I deeply wanted and still want this person to experience the type of relationship that God had welcomed me into through the love and blood of His only son. As I continued to pray with no result, I began to feel a pain in my life for this person that couldn’t be remedied this side of Heaven. I feared that and began to back away. That fear turned into a deeper fear that reflects why I think a lot of us in my community don’t talk about the voice of God on an intimately personal level. That fear might look something like this. What if I call out into the dark and I don’t hear anything back? What if I’m alone? What if God is out there but doesn’t care? What if I’ve done something that has caused Him to move on? We say that we believe He is present, He is good, but do we really mean it? I know now that I have to be willing to go back to the original pain and find a way to embrace it. I need to face those cliffs and chasms of fear with the flight of faith. I believe God loves me and wants to speak to me. Now I just need to believe it. What about you? Where have you drawn lines with God? Where do you hear the Sacred Echo of God's voice reverberating in your life?