His Voice

voice

1. the sound or sounds uttered through the mouth of living creatures

2. the faculty or power of uttering sounds through the mouth by the controlled expulsion of air

3.a range of such sounds distinctive to one person

 

May 8 marked the 34th year since I and my siblings have heard our father's voice. I still miss him terribly. I often call to mind some of his favorite expressions ("crime-in-etely" - I have no idea what it means, but he used it as a curse word or "oh my aching back" - an expression of disgust or impatience with a given situation). I remember his jokes (that he told over and over and over). I miss his laugh. I miss the sound of his voice. No one else in the world has the exact same tone or timbre. No other voice sounds just like his. I miss the sound of my mom's voice too, and my mother-in-law's, and my brother-in-law's. I can't wait to hear them all again, but there's one voice that I want to hear more than any other.

 

I love the sweet little voice of my grand daughter when she asks "nicely," tilting her head to one side, bobbing it up and down, scrunching up her shoulder just a bit as she says, "pweese, Gwammy." I love the voices of my grown children (and the memory of their childhood voices), my husband's, my sisters', and my dear friends' voices. I love to hear them all, but none of them are the one voice that I want to hear more than any other.

As I picked up my Bible the other day, as I do every time I read it, I said a quick prayer, "let me hear Your voice." Of course, I didn't mean literally hear God's voice with my physical ears. I simply meant that I wanted to hear what His words truly say. As I prayed those words for the umpteenth time in my life, I wondered, for the very first time, what Jesus' voice sounds like - His literal, audible voice. What is its pitch and tone? Is it deep and booming or rich and musical? What does His laugh sound like? Is He an alto, tenor, or base (or is He all of them at once because He's God and could somehow pull that off)? What does it sound like when He sings over me (Zephaniah 3:17)? What does it sound like when He says my name?

I can only imagine that it must be the most wonderful sound in all of creation, and that when at last we hear Him, everything else will fade away.  Nothing else will matter. His voice that had the power to speak the world into being will fill our senses, surround us, envelope us, permeate through all our defenses and rest deep within our souls. 

I can't wait!