Nate Wilson’s Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl is now out and is fantastic thus far. From an early part:

There are Christians in the world who bemoan the absence of God’s speech, who cry out for personal communication with God Himself. They want cues for their lines. They want explanations and specific direction from the Artist.

And God, as far as they can tell, is ignoring them. They feel neglected–because they weren’t cast as Moses or Elijah or Enoch or Gideon.

Tell me what you want me to do, God. speak to me (in English please) and tell me if I should take the job in Des Moines or stay closer to my mother.

Then, because their part in this story does not include cosmic voice-overs in English, they enter into an existential crisis. They begin to “doubt.”

What kind of story do you think this is? I have no problem with the pettiness of your Des Moines dilemma. The world spins on through space, bowled by its Maker. The sun burns on, hot with His words, and yet He still crafts every snowflake without digital shortcuts. He knows that you want to move to Des Moines and yet you feel guilty. He wrote the story. He crafted your character. He gave you life and a plot of your own. Even simple character stories, the kind with no special effects, put together by one lonely producer and starring unbeautiful people, even those are not beneath Him. Infinite reaches all the way up into the transcendent epic of the stars, and all the way down into the ant hill where one loyal worker spends his life toiling, from its first day after the larval stage to its noble end, killed by a ladybug while defending the colony’s vulnerable herd of aphids.

The ant’s story may be more dramatic than yours, but it’s not bigger. And don’t worry, some day you’ll play for keeps too. Some day, even in slow, suburban stories, there will come a death scene.

But why would any Christian claim that God has stopped talking? Did He speak the world into existence? Does matter exist apart from Him? Is it still here? Are you still here? Then He is still speaking?