Acts 9:1-20 Ps 117:1bc, 2 Jn 6:52-59

Weekly Guide for Daily Prayer The Daily Reflections

Several years ago, I made a short silent retreat at a retreat center in rural Iowa. There were several powerful moments throughout the course of that retreat, but today’s readings reminded me of one in particular. One night I decided to take a walk to the front of the camp (probably a mile or so in length). I had forgotten to bring a flashlight, but the stars were fairly bright so I set out on my journey anyway. When I eventually reached the end of the road, I found myself frustrated that God had not responded to anything I had just spent the last mile telling God about! Then it hit me… I never took the time to listen. As such, I devoted the rest of the walk back to simply open my heart and my mind.
           
It was not until the very end of the walk that I encountered God. On the way back, clouds began to materialize and darkness crept in around me. While it was somewhat frightening, I was more disappointed that God had not spoken to me. Eventually it became too dark to even see where I was going, so I begrudgingly pulled out my phone and turned it on. After booting up there was one message in my inbox… it was from my brother; it read, “Hi. What’s up?” To make a long story short, he was precisely the person that I spent most of my time talking to God about on the walk out and, moreover, he was well aware that I was on a silent retreat and so knew I would not be able to respond to that until I returned. Needless to say, I could not simply explain it as coincidence.
           
I write this story in light of today’s readings, because it gives me insight into the reading from Acts. In both of these stories, I see God using other people to communicate. It seems that so often we tend to “limit” God; denying the possibility that God could, in fact, be speaking to us through others or using other people in our life. Or, viewed another way, we may deny that God could possible use us to communicate to others. Why do we do this? The story in Acts offers the beautiful scene of God healing Saul’s blindness… through Ananias. This story serves as a good reminder to me that I should not be deaf to the world around me, as God can speak to me through the world if I truly try to listen.