God Whispers

I’m floating along the Mary River in a small canoe. It’s late spring and the warm sun is balm on my back.  I relax and forget the busy life I’ve been leading back in town. I’m on holidays.                                                    Photo - Roger and Daphne Saunders Branches trail across the river’s edge, dripping vines into the water. Tiny wrens break the silence with their twittering.  The current carries me towards the Homestead shores, so there’s no need to paddle now. Just bask in the sun and enjoy the silence and the beauty as I drift on the current. Dragonflies glisten, their wings catching the sunlight as they skip across the water weed. Beside me float images of pine-clad mountains, trees and clouds. They skim along on the river’s surface.  Great billowing grey and white clouds slide beside me.  My mind drifts to that other world of busy people, chatter, teaching lessons. I enjoy it all – but this peaceful world is

How do most unbelievers view our faith? Do they see us as delusional? Or weak people needing a crutch? (That’s what I believed as an atheist.) Or as enviable but rather simple people? I grew up in a home where my parents apparently had no religion but, being socially correct, sent us to Sunday School. We went to a Methodist Sunday School which I enjoyed but it had little impact on my life. Down the street lived the Joneses, a religious family who were part of a denomination where the people kept mainly to themselves. We socialised with them on rare occasions like birthday parties, the Jones girls always clad in pretty dresses. They were not part of our tree-climbing, cubby-house-making childhood. There was a wide gulf in those days between some of the denominations. We had no idea of the smorgasbord of faiths our society would embrace in these days to come.                          Photo - Oakeybourne, our old Queenslander at Corinda One day I noticed