Dear Friends:

     The experts tell us that 30% of our communication with one another happens through speech.  The rest happens through “body-talk”; touch, smiles, frowns, the appearance of our eyes, stiff posture, slouching; or through a medley of body and spirit messages that convey to the close and  sensitive volumes of messages about us unrecognized by outsiders.

     If all this makes sense to you (and it does to me), you might wonder (as I do) what messages or bits of information about ourselves we send out without being aware of them.  What do I convey to other people in these multiple ways and how do they understand me?  When I consider that my words are misunderstood often enough, I shudder to think how all the other stuff might be perceived.

     And the fog of paranoia around me grows darker when I consider what messages I am conveying to God.

     But, mercifully, there is a difference in how God reads us and how other human beings read us.  Other human beings hear our words and experience all the other ways we communicate, and out of all this they believe they know more or less what is on our mind and what we are like.  If they misunderstand something in our non-verbal seventy percent, misinterpret a bit of our body language or draw the wrong conclusion from a choice we make, they may not get a true impression of us.

     None of this applies with God.  Whatever mess we make of our communications with others, God sees through it all to the core of truth within us.  God can read our hearts and minds without needing to guess at our words and actions.

     The reason this is good news is that we don’t have to put on a show for God.  We can talk to God clearly and simply in the confidence that God, our Creator, already knows the “thoughts of our hearts”.  With God there is no chance of our being misunderstood or misinterpreted.

     God knows us.  When we talk to God it is as  though we are speaking to a no-nonsense, older, loving relative who has known us since birth and loves us dearly.  With such an older companion we can feel confidence, an easy openness, the warmth of being loved, respected and taken seriously, and the desire to “do right” by that older companion that comes with our good character.

     We need to remind ourselves of this because we are deluged daily by the values of the world.  Such values can be unjust, deceptive, dishonorable and false.  Movies, books and television often convey the message that there is no higher value in life than the gratification of our instinctive desires.  Although many of our secular and atheist friends live decent lives and are good neighbors, the majority of the millions with no connection to God live by the material standards of secular culture.

     Christians are moral beings because we are conscious of living in a world created by the God of love and justice.  Our morality is a sign that we inhabit a spiritual, as well as a material, reality.

     This God of love and justice knows how hard it is for us to follow Christ’s straight and narrow path through this world.  God knows we make mistakes, act wrongly, fail as often as we succeed, and become exasperated by the unfairness and disappointments of life.  God knows we grieve.  God knows all this because Christ lived in this world.

     Knowing each of us and knowing the world we live in makes God The Perfect Listener.  And God is never listening closer than when we are at our worst, most hopeless, or our wit’s end.

     Talk to God.  Begin by talking to yourself — it is a sure sign of sanity and courage.  Go out at night and walk around the block and talk to yourself.  Then, understand that someone is listening.  Not just anyone, but someone who has known you since birth, someone who cares.  Then shift your conversation from yourself to the One who listens.

     Admit mistakes, give thanks for good things, ask for help.  Lay out your fears, hopes, longings.  And don’t fear being misunderstood.  It is not possible for God to misunderstand.     Faithfully, Jack