Q: Does God ever lack the vocabulary to speak to a person?

A. Yes, insofar as we are his vocabulary and we refuse to be available to him.

How does God speak? He spoke through Jesus and he continues to speak thru men and women. We are his word. The word made flesh.

It is the magic of the incarnation. The word is made flesh every day. We are his word. Until we enter another person’s world and speak the language of their heart, God lacks the language to speak to them.

An example: Napoleon Dynamite was inarticulate. He lacked the vocabulary to communicate. In fact, he could neither hear, nor speak. He would close his eyes and say, “Idiot,” walling himself off from others. But one day he acquired a vocabulary – he spoke to the student body at his school thru dance.

We are similarly inarticulate. We struggle to hear and to speak to God. We need for him to break through to us – something he is eager to do. God doesn’t struggle to speak, but he does limit himself to mankind as his primary vehicle for communicating his love to us. So, we are his vocabulary.

Jesus said, we are to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” In Mark 6:30-45 Jesus fed 5,000 bread, but he himself was hungry. He went up to the mountainside to pray – to get the word of God. He needed his daily bread. In Matt. 4:4, he said, “Man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

In other words, we humans need the word of God to live. To feed others who are starving, we must recognize that we are God’s vocabulary – we must become the word of God.