"Do you hear that funny noise?"

If you're married, you've probably had this happen to you.

You're driving along, spouse seated next to you, and you notice an unusual noise coming from somewhere in the car.

So you spend the next twenty minutes trying to get your spouse to notice it, too. In your mind, it gets louder and louder until everything else is drowned out--except for your spouse telling you that he or she doesn't hear a thing.

Sometimes, I think this is how God talks to us. We hear something, softly, calling our attention; we're not sure at first, but it comes to occupy our minds more and more, until nothing else seems to matter.

Of course, what we're talking about is a lot more important than a squeaky fan belt or a stone caught in a tire tread.

But how is it that one person's mind can be suddenly "tuned in" to something, when perhaps it's been there all along, unnoticed, and continues to be so, even to those standing nearby?

Well, I don't really have any explanation--but I wonder how many people's souls would become tuned into Christ if they'd just stop talking, or watching TV, or texting inanities, long enough to let it happen.

The world may never know.

(By counterpoint, haven't you noticed that when you buy a new car, it seems like everyone else is driving the same model? Yet if you suddenly become alive with the Holy Spirit and start talking about your encounter with faith, it seems like everyone around you thinks you're nuts.)

My own story isn't interesting enough to write in detail, at least not all at once, but I for one am glad that the "funny noise" I heard turned out not to be an alternator burning out (though that's happened to me more than once), but God, burning his way in.

(As an aside, this entry came to my mind while reading Groeschel's "A Still, Small Voice", about private revelation.)