By Mary Morrell
Columnist
God’s whispers come through in times of prayer
“But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice.” — John 10:2-4
One of the lessons life inevitably teaches us is that you just never know when you are going to need a knight in shining armor.
My need came last week when I got stuck in the elevator at work.
I was on my way to lunch and took the elevator down from the second floor as usual. Suddenly I heard a strange wooshing sound I had never heard before.
“That’s not good,” I thought to myself. Still, I prepared to exit on the first floor as I heard the familiar bell that signaled the doors would be opening.
I waited, but the doors did not open.
“This is really not good,” I now thought.
I pressed all the floor buttons, the “door open” and “door close” buttons and when nothing happened I pressed the alarm button and waited for help.
After coming to grips with the reality that I was stranded behind four walls in a small, hot space with no escape route, the next few seconds were heavy breathers.
It would have been easy to get upset. A number of my acquaintences won’t even use an elevator because they are claustrophobic. In a moment of nervousness I remembered Steve McQueen in The Great Escape bouncing his baseball off the walls in solitary confinement.
It made me chuckle. I didn’t even have a baseball to pass the time.
Instead, I opened the little door to the elevator phone and called whoever was at the end of the line. A woman’s voice answered, “Where are you?”
“I’m stuck in an elevator,” I replied, thinking that must be pretty obvious. Why else would I be calling?
She directed me to try this and try that and I gathered from her tone of voice that she had experience calming over-wrought elevator prisoners.
She asked me how I was doing and I assured her I was fine. And I was relatively calm about the whole thing, even if I wasn’t completely at peace — that is until I heard the familiar voice of Tom, my co-worker, outside the doors.
I don’t remember what he said but I knew he was working on trying to get me out and, knowing him, I also knew he wouldn’t stop trying until he did.
From that point any nervousness or apprehension I may have had were completely gone. The voice of a friend, someone I knew and trusted, had taken it away.
Later that evening, as I reflected again on the experience, I thought of how often hearing the comforting voice of a trusted friend is similar to the experience of those in prayer who are comforted by God’s whispers.
Scripture is full of stories of those who heard the voice of God — Samuel, Moses, Jesus, Paul. For them the experience was direct and clear and included God calling them by name.
For us, the experience is more likely to be reminiscent of Elijah’s experience in the desert where he hears the still, small voice of God.
In a Christmas pastoral letter the Ukranian bishops write beautifully of the power of prayer to make audible the whispers of God: “It is a challenge for us to hear God’s presence among us today. We need to cultivate within us a golden silence so as to hear God’s whispers to us.” They tell us also, “Being silent, listening and following God’s whispers in our life also offers a special invitation for us to enjoy God’s peace, a peace that the world around us cannot offer in its busyness and clamor.”
Back at the elevator, where I will admit to a dozen or so Hail Marys, it wasn’t long before Tom got the thing moving, and when I reported to the wonderful lady on the telephone that the doors were opening slowly on the second floor, she advised, “Step out.”
Now that was one piece of advice I didn’t need!
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law