Signs and Wonders

I think I now have every single book that Frederich Buechner ever wrote, and they have been a rich trove of meaningful quotes for my faith, sermons or teaching. Despite having a decidedly cerebral approach to life and faith, a major turning point in Buechner’s life involved a miraculously mundane incident. In Telling Secrets, Buechner wrote about a period of life when he was worried sick about his daughter’s very serious illness. Depressed and afraid, he had pulled over and parked at the side of the road, when a single car passed by him. As he looked up, he saw only that it had a personalized license plate with a single word.  “The one word out of all the words in the dictionary that I needed most to see exactly then: TRUST.”  He received it as an impeccably timed and direct word from God.

So at lunchtime a couple weeks ago, I hopped on my bike and took off from my office at The Cove for a long and gorgeous Sonoma County ride.  After only a mile, I turned the corner on Faught Road to head towards Shiloh Regional Park, and there was a lonely sign hanging on someone’s fence– “Please Slow Down.”  That’s all it said. My very first impulse was to wonder if I was going too fast–then I remembered I was on a bike. I laughed. Obviously, cars must take that corner at unsafe speeds with some regularity. And then…suddenly it was very quiet on the road, grape-laden vineyards on both sides, the sun beat rather gently down, no cars, no noise, my heart stilled and I suddenly wondered if maybe the message was for me. Please Slow Down.

It’s funny that exact thought would grab me, because I don’t consider my present life particularly fast-paced or frantic, certainly not in comparison to other times and places. Our Seattle and Los Angeles chapters–raising kids and me coaching and Anne teaching or doing studio work and doing ministry in big cities–felt more that way. Nevertheless, I couldn’t shake the thought as I pedaled down the road: Please Slow Down.  If it didn’t address my exterior circumstances, was it about my interior life?

It didn’t take me long to note that slowing down, for me, would have a lot to do with having more wide-open times to listen. It’s always good to have quiet times in the morning, but

an afternoon, a day, or a couple days of retreat intentionally focused on listening, prayer and reflection…sounds very good for my soul.  Or meditating on scripture rather than just reading it.

Eugene Peterson once wrote that meditation on the Word is like having a lozenge slowly dissolve in your mouth over time, the value slowly seeping into you–yet our tendency is to crunch it and move on to the next thing. Or reading poetry. Have you ever noticed it’s very difficult to read poetry quickly? It is meant to wash over you and stir something inside.

Now, the truth is that I, probably like you, have had too many people find too many miracles in everyday life, and it leaves me a bit guarded. Even cynical. It’s not something I’m proud of, especially given that I believe in God-with-us.  I mean, I’ve lived half my adult life trying to increasingly pay attention to God’s presence in prayer and scripture and people and circumstances.  It may not happen every day, but I’ve heard God’s voice, had my heart warmed or convicted and received divine directions about what to do or where to go. So do I believe God can speak through a license plate?  Sure. Via a sign on a lonely highway?  Of course, absolutely. I need to rehearse some of these stories on my cynical days. Couldn’t God speak today, in tiny ways or overpowering cacophony? Yes. If Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever, I think he’s still communicating. Sometimes it’s all about the timing, isn’t it?  Which leads me to Buechner’s second story (from The Clown in the Belfry).

One day after driving into a very busy New York City, he wrote “…I was walking along Central Park South near Columbus Circle at the foot of the park when a middle-aged black woman came toward me going the other way. Just as she passed me, she spoke. What she said was, “Jesus loves you.” That is what she said: “Jesus loves you,” just like that. She said it in as everyday a voice as if she had been saying good morning, and I was so caught off guard that it wasn’t till she was lost in the crowd that I realized what she had said and wondered if I could possibly ever find her again and thank her, if I could ever catch up with her and say, “Yes. If I believe anything worth believing in this whole world, I believe that. He loves me. He loves you. He loves the whole doomed, damned pack of us.”

So…are we listening? What I’ve noticed in the past is that when I get languishing slow-down times (or rather, seize them…they don’t seem to happen without intentionality), it heightens all sorts of other sensitivities. I more easily think of people I meet as ones God has brought across my path for a reason. I’m more aware of something in a conversation that prompts me to ask one more question. Hearing God’s voice in everyday life happens more often than we know, whether it comes from a lightning bolt, a mundane circumstance, a license plate, a stranger’s voice or…a hand-written sign on a lonely road.  Please slow down.

Peace of Christ,

Dan Baumgartner

Dan Baumgartner is the senior pastor at The Cove in Santa Rosa CA and serves as Secretary on The Fellowship Community Board.