When God Surprises

“It’s too loud!”

More than once that was my granddaughter’s reaction last week to the tones and sounds she was hearing for the first time in her mostly-deaf right ear.  The cochlear implant was connected and sending sound waves, and she was hearing them!

But to her they were “too loud”. 

They weren’t the first sounds she has heard.  Fortunately her other ear, with the assistance of a hearing aid has given her fairly good hearing.  So, she recognizes sound and has an ever-increasing ability to speak and growing vocabulary.  But now, through the miracles of surgery and technology she was experiencing something new and previously unknown…hearing in her right ear.

Really, they were not “loud” at all.  But when you’ve never heard anything before your first experience to a sound that breaks years of silence might be “Wow!”  She was used to nothing.  Suddenly there was sound interrupting that nothing.

“Too loud” was her way of saying, “Wow!”  

That’s often the way it is with us when we hear or learn from experience a spiritual truth from God’s Word.  Perhaps we’ve gone our whole lives assuming one thing or believing another, only to discover that God has a different take on it.  Then suddenly or gradually – it doesn’t have to take a bolt of lightning – God rocks our world with something we either didn’t know or to which we had turned off our spiritual senses.

What’s new to us might not be new at all.  And because God is the only one in this universe who does not change what might seem new or surprising to us is only due to the finite and limited extent of our own experiences.  But God’s truth is both eternally true and absolutely true.  It just might not seem that way to us at the first.

Consider that Jeremiah, the author of the book of Lamentations – expressions of disappointment or sorrow – wrote that God’s mercies are “new every morning”, and that those new mercies are evidence of His great faithfulness.  If you can’t handle “new”, you’ll have a tough time relating to God. 

Initially we might not be very receptive because it is so different – maybe even revolutionary.  It might even stun us and cause us to wonder or doubt.  But just like sound is sound, whether we can hear it or not, truth is truth.

Think about Paul’s conversion experience on the Damascus road.  His whole adult life he has sincerely believed Jesus to be a fraud and His followers to be dangerous heretics.  Then he is dismounted from his horse by a blinding light and a voice that follows identifies Himself as Jesus.

Life changes are sometimes triggered by “Wow!” moments – maybe not as dramatic as Paul’s or even Gwyneth’s.  But they may be big surprises – at least to you.  And always they result in change as we learn more about Him and His truthful ways.

Look for those “Too loud!  Wow!” moments as you hear and study God’s Word.  Then expect great changes ahead.