By: Yvette Cherry
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how God gets my attention. Like, when he really needs me to listen to a new direction, or when he wants me to know that he’s still right here.
When I think about the times that God has shown up most powerfully, he has often chosen to do it in creative ways.
Like the time when I was 12, and I saw Jesus’ legs while I was sitting on the toilet. Or when I was 33, on my knees in my room, asking God, “what do you want me to do with my life?” and he said “go to the city on the train.” The next day I went, and I met an Ethiopian man in Myer. He bought me a cup of tea and prophesied a powerful word.
Maybe my favourite one, was when we were sitting by the river, on a big picnic blanket during the worst season of my life, and God strolled past me, wearing skinny leg jeans, walking a sausage dog.
I’d had an earworm; a song looping through my mind for about a month; a sure sign I was very stressed. The song was ‘There Goes God’ by Crowded House. The lines I’d not been able to shake were, “hey, don’t look now, but there goes God, in sexy pants, with a sausage dog…”
I told a mate at work about that recently. He asked me if the man was an angel. I said, “nah, his name is John. His daughter was in the same kindy class as my daughter…”
God shows up.
Often when I ask him to. Sometimes when I’m in despair.
He knows me and how I think, and I think He delights to tap into the whimsical, quirky current that runs like liquid gold through my neurodivergent brain.
But God also shows up in the words of the Bible. This is where I find him most, and this is where I go back to check whether the whimsy lines up with the wisdom.
Yesterday I was scrubbing a toilet when I felt God say, “my word is a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path.” Sometimes I hear a word from God as a horizontal thought that crosses over vertical ones. I said that in a sermon once and a young guy called out, “oh yeh, me too!” Like I’d just described something really ordinary that made perfect sense.
Anyway, the thought came really clearly smashing through the dull one (which I think was, “if I get a butter knife and wrap paper towel around it, I might be able to reach the crusty urine in the gap there…”)
There have been times in my life when I’ve been at a crossroad without a strong sense of what to do next. Not in every case, but sometimes, I have gone to my Bible, found a clear and right answer, and chosen to just do that. In those times, I felt like scripture has given me a bit of lamp light, just enough to see my way forward and trust that each step was going to lead me to a place where things become clear again.
Sometimes scripture isn’t that clear. But sometimes it is.
Your word is a lamp to my feet
And a light to my path.
I have sworn and I will confirm it,
That I will keep Your righteous ordinances.
I am exceedingly afflicted;
Revive me, O LORD, according to Your word.
O accept the freewill offerings of my mouth, O LORD,
And teach me Your ordinances.
My life is continually in my hand,
Yet I do not forget Your law.
The wicked have laid a snare for me,
Yet I have not gone astray from Your precepts.
I have inherited Your testimonies forever,
For they are the joy of my heart.
I have inclined my heart to perform Your statutes
Forever, even to the end.
Psalm 119: 105- 112
Article supplied with thanks to Yvette Cherry.
About the Author: Yvette is a pastor with Baptist Churches WA and the National Director of Australian Baptist Women. She is married to Leigh and together they have four young daughters.
Feature image: Canva
