The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"Sweet Is Thy Voice"
George and Susan fell deeply in love in high school, and married in November, 1941. The next month brought the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the winter of 1942 saw George leave Susan to serve with the U.S. Army in Europe. He wrote her often, she responded, and they both prayerfully awaited the end of the war and a joyous reunion.
On a cold, late winter morning in 1943, Susan received a telegram she hoped would never appear on her doorstep. "The Department of the Army regrets to inform you that your husband was killed in action at the Battle of Kasserine Pass in Tunisia." Susan fell to her knees as the words broke her heart, and as she realized she would never see her beloved's face or hear his voice again.
The weeks passed in the pain of loss and in Susan's attempt to face the future without George. She knew she was not alone in her grief. So many other American families shared her sorrow, and she bravely and prayerfully sought to go forward to a life she found difficult to imagine. On an especially difficult morning, the phone rang. Susan really didn't feel like talking to anyone on this day, but she made her way to the phone and picked up the receiver. "Hello" she said. The next moment brought a sound Susan never forgot for the rest of her life. "Susan?" Through the phone line, the voice of a ghost sounded. "Susan, it's George!" As she had when receiving the telegram, Susan fell to her knees, the telephone receiver slipping from her hands and crashing to the floor. In a near faint, she came to her senses and desperately grasped for the receiver. The voice continued to sound as she drew the receiver to her ear. "Sweetheart, it's me! It's George!" The rest of the story is best left to our imagination as a broken heart and a heart seemingly alive from the dead found each other through the phone line in joy and a greater love than they had known ever before.
The telegram had wrongly identified George as a casualty in battle, a sad error that sometimes happens in the confusion of wartime. He was later wounded, and returned home to Susan not long after the fateful day and phone call. In the years to come, if "happily ever after" meant anything, George and Susan fulfilled the wonderful adage. It's a beautiful story, and reveals in the light of its sadness and happiness a truth every believer must know and embrace.
"Sweet is thy voice" (Song of Solomon 2:14).
The imagery of Solomon's allegory lends itself to interpret this beautiful statement in terms of God speaking to His trusting child, of whom the passage says, "Thou art in the clefts of the rock." "Sweet is thy voice" He would say to all raised from spiritual death through the grace of God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Like Susan hearing the voice of her cherished husband from seemingly beyond the grave, our Heavenly Father finds the voices of His Christ-inhabited sons and daughters a blessed sound all the more precious because it peals with the bells of His Son's resurrection life. He delights in our prayers, a truth completely counterintuitive to our sensibilities and understanding, but also completely affirmed by the Scriptures that declare our spiritual capacity to bless the heart of God. "The Lord taketh pleasure in His people" (Psalm 149:4).
No truth will more transform our life of prayer. Indeed, communion with God bears many functional aspects of vital importance in our walk with Him. That we can please His heart, however, speaks to the personal potential of blessedness that graces the wondrous gift. We so often focus on what prayer does for us, a proper consideration frequently addressed in Scripture. However, the realization of what prayer does for God must surely guide and empower our determination to lift the voices He finds sweet to His heart. Who can fully understand such wonder? We need not seek an answer. This holy place of God's heart and our hearts is best left to grateful wonder and loving devotion.
Susan heard a voice from beyond the grave that echoed in her heart for a lifetime, the sweetest sound that ever graced her ears and heart. In this moment, believers raised from our spiritual grave by the grace of the Lord Jesus can utter a voice that will echo in God's heart for an eternity. King David realized this, and we do well to join him in the holy quest to delight the heart of God…
"Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and He shall hear my voice."
(Psalm 55:17)
Weekly Memory Verse
The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise Him.
(Psalm 28:7)
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