God's Message Hits The Spot

I have been reading Brother David Steindl-Rast's Gratefulness: The Heart of Prayer and was particularly struck  by a passage in which he explores how God speaks to us in different, but relevant, ways. Just as we think we have got things pinned down, God comes from another angle, challenging, encouraging, inspiring, whatever it is that we need.

Steindl-Rast writes: 

"p. 108/9 – “God’s faithfulness needs to be spelled out in ever new forms forever and ever. Everything there is in the whole universe exists for no other reason than to get this message across. In faith the heart intuits this secret. God’s message is always the same. But the way the message is expressed makes all the difference. You may perceive the message in an apple orchard in full bloom. But the same message is also there in a forest fire. The difference would be bewildering, but to discover the same message in different disguises turns it all into a delightful game, a spelling game. That horse frolicking in the meadow is one way to spelling out God’s Word; the cat asleep in my lap is another. Each is unique, untranslatable. Poems can’t be translated; they can at best be approximated in a different language. In a poem the language counts as much as the message. God is the poet. If we want to know what God says in a tomato, we must look at a tomato, feel it, smell it, bite into it, have the juice and seeds squirt all over us when it pops. We must savour it and learn this tomato poem “by heart.” But what God must say can’t be exhausted in tomato language. So, God gives us lemons and speaks in Lemonese. Living by the Word means learning God’s languages, one by one, a lifetime long.”

It is not that God gives different messages - but it is that God gives relevant messages.