“I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me” (Habakkuk 2:1).
I’ve always known that farewells have the bittersweet taste of unripe raspberries. Or at least, I’ve known this since the days when I diligently counted—and always came up short—the remaining days of paradise spent with my grandparents in the city. Days filled with joy, yet overshadowed by the looming, knotted thought of separation, which always took place with stoically swallowed tears at the bus station platform.
Goodbyes aren’t easy for adults either. I now understand that my grandfather’s sadness had the same core, though it was wrapped in a different shell—measured in the frantic purchase of treats from the station’s shop. And then, in the moments just before leaving, my grandfather would appear with one last chocolate, passing it from hand to hand until it reached the most inconsolable passenger on the overcrowded bus.
I haven’t managed farewells well as an adult either, often wondering how others manage to navigate the pain. How do they carry on when circumstances tear them from their loved ones, with no hope of reunion? With no means of communication for the rest of their lives? Do they feel the same sharp pang of loss as time’s corrosive passage wears on?
Some separations feel like a kind of death, only crueler, since the people involved are still alive. Take, for example, those living on either side of the most heavily militarised border in the world. North and South Koreans, who—if fortunate enough to be selected for the now-abandoned family reunion program (discontinued in 2018 due to political tensions)—could only see their loved ones for a few brief hours after being separated for over half a century. The joy of reunion is as intense as the agony of parting, a pain that remains unsoftened by the hope of future meetings. This traumatic and bittersweet encounter is captured in the heartbreaking cry of a 91-year-old mother, forced to part once again from the daughter she hadn’t seen in 65 years: “She is alive, and I can’t see her anymore for the rest of my life, can you even imagine that?”
A bridge over the most painful separation in the universe
The truth is, we cannot fully comprehend pain until we ourselves have felt its sting. In the same way, we cannot truly grasp the pain of the Great Separation that occurred thousands of years ago between the Creator God and His children, with whom He once walked daily in the cool of the day (Genesis 3:8).
God’s original plan to meet with humanity face-to-face every day was disrupted by the rebellion of our first parents, as noted by Professor Ron Clouzet. Sin not only inclined us to turn away from our Creator, but it also made us incapable of bearing His glory (Exodus 33:20). While sin has robbed us of the privilege of direct communication with God, He has drawn closer to us through His Spirit, guiding us with the gentle whisper of His voice (“This is the way; walk in it”—Isaiah 30:21). However, the devil can counterfeit divine messages, says Ron Clouzet, who explains that God has found a more reliable way to speak to us: through prophets—people trained to listen to His voice. Therefore, if we want to hear Him, we need to open His Book, trusting that the more we absorb His Word, the more clearly He can speak to us even when we are far from it, busy with our daily lives.[1]
In addition to Scripture, God can choose a variety of ways to restore communication with us. We are all so different, yet the way He speaks and leads us is tailored to our unique needs and experiences. Sometimes we encounter dramatic responses, but more often, He chooses simple, ordinary means to make Himself heard.
The God who speaks “sometimes in one way, then in another”
When God guides us in a certain direction, He often does so through His Word, through impressions and convictions inspired by His Spirit, and through circumstances. Most frequently, He uses all three methods together, as Corrie ten Boom once said.[2]
Through Scripture, God reveals His plan of salvation, but He can also provide answers to the problems and situations we face at a particular moment. I am one of those people whose Bible is filled with notes and dates scribbled next to verses—markers of times when God led me in a specific direction during my journey with Him. Even without a prayer journal, I can recall many experiences and answers connected to a note or a date tied to a verse or passage that “just happened” to be part of my study on that day.
For Gladys Aylward, a missionary in China in the last century, the written Word served as a guiding thread along her path of service—a journey marked by challenges, suffering, and dangers, but also by miracles that seemed lifted straight from the Old Testament. In moments of crisis, when decisions needed to be made swiftly, God’s preferred way of answering her was by reminding her of a Bible verse she had memorised long before.
One such instance occurred on the banks of the Yellow River, during one of the many life-threatening situations Gladys faced in China. Chased by Japanese soldiers and responsible for over 100 hungry and exhausted children after weeks of travelling through the mountains, she learned that the last ferry transporting refugees had left that very morning. As the children clung to her, hoping to witness a miracle like the parting of the Red Sea, Gladys knew that her only refuge was prayer. On the fourth day by the river, the long-awaited answer came in the form of a Bible verse urging them to praise the Lord (Psalm 68:4). As the children sang psalm after psalm, their voices echoed across the water, reaching the last remaining Chinese soldier on the northern bank of the river, who had orders not to leave his post until he saw the Japanese approaching. Uncertain whether the voices he was hearing were real or just his imagination, the soldier tried to trace the source of the echoing songs. These were melodies he remembered from the Christian church he had attended as a child. And so, just as in the time of Moses, God once again made a way through the waters—this time using a boat and a ferry.
Circumstances, those “closed” or “open doors” we encounter along our path, are also part of God’s communication with us. The apostle Paul uses the image of an open door to describe an unexpected opportunity to preach in previously inaccessible or hostile places, a chance that arose through prayer (1 Corinthians 16:9).
The voices of those around us can also be a channel through which God makes Himself heard. Writer and missionary Elisabeth Elliot emphasised the importance of seeking counsel from people who love God and who have the experience of seeking and discerning His will.[3]
Sometimes, we wish for the answer to our prayers to be dramatic, undeniable, and bordering on the impossible. We think of those memorable responses that we never forget if we’ve been the recipients, or that we read about with awe—or perhaps scepticism—when others recount their experiences. Signs, visions, dreams, messages delivered by angels, and miraculous events are just some of the ways God has revealed Himself to people, both in the past and still today.
If George Müller’s life was woven from prayer, it’s equally true that the answers he received had a supernatural thread running through them that is hard to dismiss—so much so that even newspapers praised them. Sceptics might ridicule Müller’s claim that his project of caring for 10,000 orphans was sustained solely by faith, but “facts are facts,”[4] as the Liverpool Mercury pointed out at Müller’s death, noting that the existence of the five orphan houses he founded could not be denied. “The life of this man reached such a level of the miraculous that it seems simply unbelievable,” added the Daily Telegraph, cataloguing the achievements of a mission that, by human standards, had no chance of success.[5]
Spectacular answers to prayer received by people we may never know can cast beams of light into our darkest nights. I recall the story of Pastor Neil Watts, who survived the crash of a plane over the Pacific. Among the passengers who drowned was anthropologist Andrew Gray, known to be an excellent swimmer. After hours battling the waves under a pitch-black sky in the midst of a relentless storm, Watts was certain he was going to die. But just as he was on the verge of giving up, exhausted and drained, the clouds parted, and a single star shone down on him. It lasted just five or six seconds, but for the missionary, who had never swum more than 100 metres before that night, it was a sign that God had neither forgotten nor abandoned him.
I can’t know how many hearts were filled with courage and hope by Neil Watts’ story, but I know I read it while trapped in my own personal storm, and it served the same purpose for me as that star had for him in the darkness. Amidst the chaos of the storm, a voice beyond my own thoughts reassured me that I, too, would reach the shore.
In the arms of the God who answers
Sooner or later, we find ourselves lamenting that God seems hidden, or that we hear Him only faintly, “like through static.”[6] But with so many competing voices around us, this may simply be a matter of misplaced priorities.
“What is concrete but immaterial can be kept in view only by painful effort,”[7] said C.S. Lewis, stressing the need to silence the voices of desires and plans that hijack our attention from the moment we wake up.
God speaks to us, but only the quietness of our hearts before Him allows us to discern His whispers.
Prayer frees us from the entanglement of urgencies and deadlines, but for it to become true rest for our souls, we need to make God the centre of every day—not just another item to check off our to-do list.
To truly discern His voice, it’s not enough just to hear it, says Christian author Priscilla Shirer, emphasising the importance of a life lived in obedience.[8] If we are willing to follow His lead, God will speak to us—though His response may not always come wrapped in words, but rather in the peace that flows from communion with Him.
Waiting is another key to hearing God, Shirer says. At the heart of constant waiting is the belief that God is at work, even when He seems absent. Living in expectation, continually looking for His revelation, is how we prepare ourselves to recognise His hand. Without this practice of “constantly pivoting toward God”[9] we can easily miss the moments when He speaks, mistaking them for our own thoughts or mere coincidences.
More than responding to a specific prayer, God answers our longing for Him. When we yearn, like the prophet Isaiah, for God to tear open the heavens and come down to us (Isaiah 64:1), He will make Himself known in one way or another. No one has been more consumed by our desire for Him than the God from whose arms we tore ourselves away, not realising how much it would cost Him. No one else stretched out His arms on the cross, quieting the turmoil of our loneliness in the embrace of that love.
Carmen Lăiu highlights both the ordinary and extraordinary ways in which God communicates with us, after sin robbed humanity of the privilege of meeting directly with its Creator.
