Save our fingerprints, our DNA, the kind of stuff we can’t see without fancy, high tech bifocals – is there anything more distinctive than someone’s voice?

You and I can change our appearance from day to day, week to week, year to year. But unless we learn the actor’s tricks of accent and inflection and mimicry, the voice we’re born with is the voice we own. It marks us. It is uniquely ours.

I love the heart-rush of emotion that is triggered by a familiar, cherished voice. Just a few words from a family member or a friend can ground me – help me find my place and feel at home.

But it’s Heaven’s voice – the Savior’s voice – that most often captures my imagination and makes off with my heart. How could it not?

It’s the voice that commanded water to become wine and stilled wild waves and healed withered limbs. The voice that insisted love trumps law and the brokenhearted are blessed and fishermen can catch men’s souls.

It’s the voice that simply said “follow Me,” and changed the course of lives forever. The one that made mysterious metaphors for thousands, and then explained them to a few. His sweet voice is the voice that comforted friends, and even called one of them back from his grave. And I suspect that His was the only voice that could make a man leave heaven and return to this slim shadow of reality we call life.

He said things no one else had ever said, in ways that no one else ever will. There was never a time when He wasn’t speaking, and never a time when His voice will not be heard.

All this is wonder enough – but here’s the kicker, the absolute and utterly miraculous truth: it’s that same voice that speaks truth and comfort and correction and hope to me when I still my heart to listen for it.

No, I don’t hear voices. But in my heart I hear the voice of the One who has captured me. It rings with the unmistakable beauty of Heaven, and it is as old and familiar as the first voice I must have heard as a child.

Listen. Can you hear it?

It’s Heaven’s voice. And it knows your name.

Now on the last day, the day of the great feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.’ So there arose a division in the multitude because of Him. The officers therefore came to the chief priests and Pharisees, and they said to them, “Why did you not bring Him?” The officers answered, “Never did a man speak the way this man speaks.” (John 7:37-38; 43-46, NASB)

© Leigh McLeroy 2004