Does God speak to you?
Have you ever heard God speaking to you? I have, or at least I thought I did. I was a wee lad, living in Minnesota. My brother and I slept in bunks - I had the bottom - and we had put our jammies on, brushed our teeth and got the usual tucking in treatment, I suppose. It's strange that I can remember this, since I remember virutally nothing from my childhood (I've blocked it all, I suppose, on account of the emotional trauma - but for some reason not this experience). Anyway, I remember going to sleep and then sometime in the night I heard this dark, sinister voice say, "JIMMY!" I heard it again, and the hair on my neck stood up and my heart started racing. Again, "JIMMY!" I scrunched way down in the covers to prevent being seen, and I did what any sensible child would do in this situation - I pretended to be asleep so the voice would go away. Eventually it did. I am not making this memory up - this is exactly what I think happened. Only, I guess it could have been a dream... Or, I suppose it could have been someone other than God - maybe the Devil. I don't think it was my Dad, since he doesn't have that kind of wicked sense of humor.

I've also met others whom God has spoken to. When I was in college, I was going to Dallas Baptist University, where all the good girls attend classes. I had gone out on a date with this girl - I forget her name - and we kind of liked each other. After attending church with them on Sunday, I went home for Sunday lunch with her family - sort of like a promotional tour so that they could get to know and love me. Everything was going well until after lunch everyone kind of cleared off as if on cue, and I was led outside to the backyard ostensibly to get some fresh air, where I was then placed in a lawn chair across from this girl's visibly irritated father who verbally accosted and threatened me for about 2 hours about what would happen to me if I tried "soiling" his precious virginal daughter. I guess that was the usual treatment her boyfriends got. I finally escaped, and the next day at school I saw her, and I was all ready to say something about not being "ready" for a serious relationship right now, when she beat me to the punch. She said that she prayed about it all night long, and that God spoke to her and told her that I was "not the one." I was so relieved that I didn't even try to call her on that one - who knows, maybe God really did say something to her.

I have been thinking about this issue because, as you know, I drive back and forth between Austin and the Big D every week, which is pretty brutal in the boredom department. I've taken to noticing small, insignificant details and signs, and I think that the most interesting and unique billboard that I pass on my way home (it's in Temple, or Belton - I always get those two mixed up) is an enormous black one, with giant white letters and no pictures whatsoever. It simply reads, "TELL THE KIDS I LOVE THEM - GOD" This is puzzling to me. First, it sounds like God is going away for awhile or something - like he's leaving us, which can't be good. I mean, the world is totally eff-ed up as it is, with God being AROUND... what would things be like if he were away and the "mice" could play all day and do whatever they want? It would be a disaster, I think. The other thing that bothered me was that I don't really understand why, with all the electronic and cutting-edge technological media out there, God would choose the billboard to broadcast his message to the world. At first I thought that maybe it's because God is so old, and old people aren't very good at computers or VCRs and such, but then I remembered that God is omniscient and knows everything, by definition. Also, I wondered why God is so concerned with Temple and/or Belton, which is the only place in the entire world that he chose to send this message to us. I figure that either they are just completely wicked and sinful that he's warning them before he blots them off the map like Sodom, or he really loves them over and above everyone else, so they deserve the little extra carrot of this nice, actual proof of his existence. But seriously, how many people are going to actually take the time to go to Belton and/or Temple to see this miraculous sign? Probably not many, unless they are already making a trip down I-35 and want to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

It is an interesting issue. It would be great if all the readers of this blog would read this and weigh in on their experiences with God talking to them, or people they know, so that I can begin to gather more evidence. That would be, what - 5 people - or 4 (I'm the fifth)? Oh, and there's that other guy who likes to talk about Hello Kitty and stumbled across the Nerds4Words once and responded to a post. So that's six.  ¶ 8:52 AM