The other day a reader wrote me the following:
“John, would you comment on something I heard last night at church, which is that God uses people to deliver messages? The idea is that the delivery is usually made by someone who has no clue what the message means, to someone who is desperate for the message. Do you think that’s a possibility, that God really uses people to deliver his messages?”
I’m not sure people have any other purpose but to deliver each other messages from God. So, I mean … yes: I think every person is a walking, talking, mobile, non-stop broadcast tower for station WGOD. How else does God communicate with us but through people? Through weather? Through animals, those adorable teases who always act like they’re going to talk to us, but never quite do? Through hieroglyphics that magically appear on elevator walls? Sure, that would considerably liven up elevator rides, but no– — that’s not how it works. When God wants to say something to us, he almost always says it through the people in our lives.
And God, being God, always has something to say. To everyone, through everyone, all of the time. It never stops. God is never done communicating with any of us. The one message he never sends anyone is, “Okay, you’re done now. You’ve got it all now. You’ve learned everything there is to know about my nature, will, processes, and purposes. So you won’t be hearing from me anymore. God out.”
Nah. God’s broadcasting to us, 24/7. And the medium of his ongoing message is every single person whose path ever crosses our own.
Our job is to remember that, to make sure that we focus in on, and hear the message we can be sure God is sending us whenever we engage with another person.
And what message is that sure to be? What message is everyone always sending everyone else?
Love me. Love me, love me, love me.
That’s the single message each and every one of us is constantly broadcasting to the world: Love, love me do.
And when God as Jesus was talking directly to us, what did he explicitly name as the supreme law, as the greatest of all of his commandments? What was the one thing God most wanted to make sure we got?
That we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
We’re all on the same channel; we’re all broadcasting the same thing.
All we have to do is listen to one another.
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