When our granddaughter was three years old I went for a walk with her near the apartment building where she lived with her parents. In the parking lot there was a covered section of the walkway which had a distinct echo when we spoke while passing through. We stopped to hear the echo and, I thought, to try different sounds, but Savannah wanted to hurry through. The echo actually scared her and she wanted to get away from it into ordinary air. Afterward I asked her if she would like to try out some funny words in the echo place. “No!” she said. “I don’t want to go back there at all!” “Why? I asked, and she answered, “I’m not going back! If you take me to the zoo and I get to see an echo, then I’ll go back and talk to it.” Savannah’s fear came from not being able to see anyone or any thing that had been speaking when the echo returned her voice or mine. She needed something solid and visible in order to feel safe in the tunnel.

God knew this about the Israelites, as well. For forty years he presented His visible presence to them in the cloud by day and the fire by night. It was a time of bonding which would form the people into a nation capable of worshiping an invisible God. The history of salvation continued to progress and regress until the promised one, Jesus, came in human flesh, and returned from death to give the very Spirit of God to those who sought Him, and even to those who did not seek Him: “I was found by those who did not seek me, to a nation that did not call on my name.” (Isaiah 65:1)

Once when I was a child I walked out of church with my family to get into the car to go home, and I remember thinking that there was something in the church that was different from anything I experienced at home. I thought that somehow there were two realities. It was a fleeting sensation, but it seemed to be true.

Savannah knew that she was scared, though it took me a few minutes to understand; I had never been afraid of an echo. Her solution was the same as the Israelites’ She needed tangible contact to accept our voices being returned to us, in spite of my somewhat lame explanation of “echos”. We never went to the zoo to find an echo, though her mother took her there often. God knew that she needed Him.

Love in Him,

Prue