They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. – Psalm 19:3-4

I love the word yet. It’s such a little word and YET it contains such power. It turns a sentence on its head and a person’s thoughts around in a single moment. And that moment can be either beautiful or terrifying. In this case, I find yet to contain hope.

Even though you can’t hear it, doesn’t mean it isn’t speaking to you. A flower, a mountain, a stream–all these have voices. They speak in different ways. A wheelbarrow. A balloon. A baby. It’s probably why I’ve always admired those who can’t hear. They communicate on levels that are sometimes more profound than we can with simple words alone.

Don’t get me wrong. I love words, but there is so. Much. More. And people often forget just how much more and so they think God doesn’t speak to them because they can’t HEAR him.

YET just because He doesn’t use words doesn’t mean he doesn’t speak…His voice travels to our hearts, minds and spirits of we can just be open long enough to hear it. Most of the time it isn’t that He has stopped speaking, but that we don’t listen or hear what is right in front of us.

It reminds me a lot of teaching the Imagist movement to my students. William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound said so much with so little, but students will say every time ‘what if he didn’t mean anything by this? What if it really is just a red wheelbarrow and teachers just you know add all that other stuff to make it complicated?’ What if indeed, but you miss the point little grasshoppers. It’s not about teachers adding stuff, but about what’s already there. The voice that you can’t hear is every bit as important as the one you do. It speaks, if you’ll just listen.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Matt 26:41)