Following are the winning essays in the Serra Club Essay Contest. The writers responded to the following question:
“How can we hear the whisper of God’s call in our loud, modern, American culture?”
Speaking to God through Prayer
Aubrey Gossom, an eighth-grader who attends St. Catherine School in New Haven, Ky., won first place for her essay.
We can hear the whisper of God’s call in our loud, modern, American culture by speaking to God through prayer, having moments of silence, and reading the Bible daily with yourself or others.
It’s very important to do these things so you can hear God calling you. What he has to say may create a big change in your life.
God can speak to us through prayer. When praying, you may hear a whisper from God. He could also give you signs that he is there and listening. Speaking to God through prayer is a true gift that can help us connect with Him. When we listen, we can become more like Him.
Taking periods of silence out of your day is very important. By doing this we can take time to hear God’s voice. We need to take time out of our day to sit and listen to Him. This should help you feel more relaxed and happy throughout your day.
It is very helpful to sit down with some friends or by yourself and read some pages in the Bible. Reading the Bible will make you become closer to God and help Him speak to you. He will lead you to a well lived life.
God is right by your side every second of every day. Anytime you need Him He is there. All we need to do is to open up our hearts to hear Him!
Hear the whisper of God’s call
Avery Powers, an eighth-grader at St. James School in Elizabethtown, Ky., placed second.
To hear the whisper of God’s call in our culture, we have to really listen for God and to look for him in everything we do. A lot of the time people tend to wait for miracles from God.
People wait for God to send them a physical sign of what to do and what is right for them. They aren’t reaching out to God, they wait for him to reach out to them. To hear God’s call, we have to be open to willingly talk to him and to look for him in everything we do.
A lot of people are so busy that they forget about God and then we don’t make time for him. We get so wrapped up in other things that we never think about our real purpose, serving God. We often skip church for sports or extracurricular activities and then go on with our day, our week without even saying anything to God. How are we going to be able to listen to him if we have nothing to say to him in the first place? To be able to grow in our relationship with God and to be able to hear what God is telling us, we need to make an effort as well. We can’t expect to have a sacred bond with God and be able to hear what he is saying to us if we don’t try to.
Let’s think about it from a different perspective. Say you play a sport, you love the sport, and you really want to succeed and be great at this sport, but you never practice to get better because you think your “good enough already.” Sooner than later all of your teammates are improving and getting better and they start to pass you up. This is when you start to realize that all the times you skipped practices and chose other things over what was most important to you, are really showing and you start to regret it but you can’t go back. That’s kind of like your relationship with God. You are you and God is your sport. You start out strong, you go to church, you talk to him, you listen to him. you have a great relationship with him. Then you start to get lazy because you know that he will always be there. You start choosing sleep over church, you rarely make any time for him during your week. Your relationship starts to fade and you often feel lonely and empty because you haven’t been talking to the person you would talk to about everything, and he would always listen.
So I think that to hear the whisper of God’s call in our loud, modern, American culture, you have to be just as present as he is.
God’s Voice in a Busy World
Anthony Pike, an eighth-grader who also attends St. James, placed third.
When was the last time you purposely tried to listen to God? Would you even recognize His voice among the many other voices in our busy world? When Jesus says, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” (John 10:27), we are being assured that while we are capable of hearing the voice of God, we have to believe in Him and follow Him. How do we do this?
Mass and Eucharistic Adoration are perfect places to listen to the voice of God. We hear Him speak through the proclamation of Scripture at the Mass and through the Liturgy itself. He is present in the Eucharist, so time spent in silence before Him quiets ourselves from the outside distractions which compete for our attention. It is said that the voice of God is silence, and the Word of God is Jesus, so we hear God speak when we listen to Jesus — God’s Word — in silence. This allows us to practice our belief in His presence.
Another way to hear God’s voice is through our personal prayers. Prayer can simply be defined as a conversation with God. By conversing with God through prayer, we obtain His guidance in our lives and can ask for our intentions to be granted. Through this conversation, we grow in trust and love for God, develop a strong relationship with Him, and are thankful for His blessings to us. This relationship encourages us to follow Him by keeping His commandments.
In order for Christianity to continue to exist in a busy world, She demands a connected populace. This leads to the need for us to know God and listen for His voice in our lives.
