Does God Hear Us?Do Jesus and his Father hear Buddhists when they call upon them? They hear Anyone who calls upon them. "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit" (Ps. 34:18). There is no distinction between "Jew and Greek," between those who have "it"—however humans may define "it"—and those who do not, "for the same one is Lord of all, abounding in riches to all who call upon him" (Rom. 10:12). You cannot call upon Jesus Christ or upon God and not be heard. You live in their house, their ecos (Heb. 3:4). We usually call it simply "the universe." But they fully occupy it. It is their place, their "kingdom," where through their kindness and sacrificial love we can make our present life an eternal life. Only as we understand this, is the way open for a true ecology of human existence, for only then are we dealing with what the human habitation truly is. And the God who hears is also one who speaks. He has spoken and is still speaking. Humanity remains his project, not its own, and his initiatives are always at work among us. He certainly "gives us space," as we say, and this is essential. But he continues to speak in ways that serious inquirers can hear if they will. We need not, as earlier described, stagger onward in darkness concerning what is truly good and really right. We need not fly upside down. There is a right-side up, and we can find it.—But we don't have to. We are free. For now. From The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. Copyright © 1997 by Dallas Willard. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. |
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