Recently I had a conversation with the brother of one of the other Companions. He works for a company that responds to emergency calls, and he talked about one particular call that came in. It was from a woman who had just been in a car accident, and while he could hear her clearly, she could not hear him. He stayed on the line, even though it was obvious that she did not hear him.
When she had given up trying to talk to him, he could hear her talking to her passenger, and noticed how her anxiety level kept rising. And while he knew that she didn’t hear him, he kept saying: “I am here. I hear you. Help is on the way.”
When he told me about this incident, I very much felt like this is the way it sometimes is with God and me. God speaks, and I do not hear. God is near, and I have no awareness of God’s presence. And yet God says in her calm and comforting and reassuring voice “I am here. I hear you. Help is on the way.”
As we journey through this Advent season, may God not only be born in us, but may we be attentive and become aware of all the many ways in which God is already here.
By SSJD Companion Christine Stoll
