He Surprised Me

He surprised me.

I wrote him a note, tracing across my journal page that I was eager to learn from him. "God, talk to me through your word today, please." We were interrupted by supper and elections, but picked up our conversation this morning. Opening my journal, I saw my scrawled note to God and smiled.

Leaning back in my chair, I rocked in time, noted five blue jays out the window gobbling up peanuts, and turned to Malachi. After several years of working my way slowly through the Old Testament again, the succession of prophet books had left me expecting similar material. I expected refugee stories, walls of rubble, and temple re-buildings. I expected encouragements to persevere, reiterated promises of God's love and protection, and occasional warnings. 

He surprised me.

From wrinkled Persian parchment in the 400s BC, God shot me with twenty-first century prose.

He was gentle. He was blunt.

Surely, this is contextual for your Jewish nation returning from exile, God, right? This is spiritual analogy, right?

He wielded soft sarcasm and rhetorical questions. I grabbed my pen, writing back to God, scribbling messy across the page. We talked, he countered. My writing grew slower, sobered. I listened and asked questions.

From wrinkled Persian parchment, he spoke to me in twenty-first century prose.

Linking with Emily and Jennifer

Parchment credit        Pottery credit