I repeat...and I repeat.

I have said for many, many years now that one of the top ten things I love about God is that he repeats himself.  I'm slow, hard of hearing, and I need the reiteration:-).  I'll read something in scripture and then hear it in a hear a sermon or read it in a book or a friend brings it up or I see it on a billboard or listen to it on the radio....  However it gets repeated, it does, and I know that it's something God wants me to know, hear, attend to, embrace, pray about, something.  A writer named Margeret Feinburg calls it the Sacred Echo.  She says a lot of times in Christianity they say we should listen for God's still, small voice, because that's how God spoke to Moses, but she goes on to say what we should really listen for are the things that echo in our lives that tell us about God and tell us about ourselves.

  We went to church on Sunday and in the pamphlet that they give you to follow along--the order of worship, if you will, there on page 5 was a quote taken from St. Patrick's Breastplate.

And we read this out loud together as a church:

Christ with us and Christ before us
Christ behind us and Christ in us
Christ beneath us and Christ above us
Christ to our right and Christ to our left
Christ when we lie down and Christ when we rise
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of us
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of us
Christ in every eye that sees us
Christ in every ear that hears us
We arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation and the Trinity, through the belief of the Threeness, through a confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.

I had recently written this quote in the birthday cards of two different friends and then I read it in Sunday's bulletin.

Just as a side note: I do not look at this quote as an "us" vs. "them", because I really do believe God is in all of us, whether some acknowledge this or not.
   I do not know if I have the interpretation right (I love the image of it all the same) but I have heard in the cultures where you bow in your greetings to one another, this is a way of greeting the God in each one us.  It's a way of being reverent to each other as human beings.  I think this quote taken from St. Patrick's breastplate is this message in a broad, powerful way...a way of living in Christ and honoring Christ in each one of us.

And to God, I say, I hear ya'.  I hear ya'.