It was on a Friday morning nearing the end of the summer. I was up, wandering around the house, happy to still be in my pajama pants at 10am. It was quiet and calm, the house fairly empty. And then it hit me: the indescribable urge to pray for a young woman I’d only been told about and have never before met. I knew her name and had a vague sense of her situation; a close friend of mine was counseling her at the summer camp I’ve spent many warm months at. I sat alone at my kitchen counter, sending up prayers in her name, not knowing or understanding why I felt called to do so. Later that evening, I discovered that while I had been praying, she had been in the process of making the life changing decision to follow Christ.
I marveled. What an incredible coincidence,my first thought was immediately bashed by a second: that was no coincidence. I couldn’t explain it, I didn’t understand it. So much of who God is can seem so abstract; it was easy to shrug it off as something I would never understand. But perhaps God is only abstract because we allow Him to be by placing Him outside the world of what we do understand. We keep God a mystery because, well, He’s God and that is how He is supposed to be. Isn't He?
God always listens when we pray. It’s been ingrained in us since early childhood Sunday school, one of the first lessons learned. When I was in high school, a friend came to me and confided that she didn’t believe prayer worked. How was it possible that He always listens when all she felt like she was doing was talking to a blank wall in her room? And I didn’t have an answer for her. I’d never asked how prayer works, I simply took what those Sunday school teachers said and accepted it as truth.
Prayer is the wireless form of communication between beings visible and invisible, tangible and intangible.
I know of only one person who does not own a cell phone, and he is the man who made this statement: Dr. Read Schuchardt of Wheaton College’s communication department. Cell phones are an unavoidable part of the world today. We use them to call our parents from our dorm rooms, look up the difference between "effect" and "affect," and keep up with relatives living across the country or around the world. We talk and text, snapchat and email; and never once did I ever think of prayer as being a wireless connection to God. I do not mean this as an analogy or metaphor, but as a tangible description of prayer. Perhaps the nagging urge I had to pray was not merely a coincidence or stroke of good luck, but a wireless signal being sent to me that I picked up on and listened to. And because I did, I got to experience something that ultimately deepened my faith.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
Genesis 1:1-3 (ESV)
Sonoluminescence is the study of sound on water. A fairly new concept to science and physics, it's a phenomenon only taken seriously since the 1990’s. What was discovered originally in the late 20th century is that when sound waves hit the bubbles within liquid, an emission of light is formed. Sound creates light.
The image is so vivid, so palpable: God speaks. The sound waves from His voice connect to the formless waters. And there was light.
Take into consideration the fall of Jericho in Joshua chapter 6. Is it not possible that, on the seventh day, the trumpets were blown at such a frequency that caused the brick walls to crumble? Much like on opera singer is able to shatter a wine glass at the right pitch.
Though explained, this act is no less miraculous. Somehow we've come to believe that miracles go against the laws of nature, which is not the case. A miracle is something which
