Book Review: The Sacred Echo

I became aware of the book, The Sacred Echo, from an interview with Margaret Feinberg in the last issue of "Today's Christian Woman," a magazine that has shut down this year. (By the way, they've started up an online magazine, blog and resources at kyria.com, should you want to check it out.)

It has been a lifelong, heartfelt quest for me to figure out how I can hear God's voice in my life, so I was immediately interested in Feinberg's interview on the topic. She has come to an understanding that God's voice is heard in her life through "sacred echoes," themes that pop up and repeat themselves through Bible study, the comments of others around her, and her life events. We're not very good listeners, Feinberg points out, so God uses repetition to get our attention. I would add that we're not very good learners, either, as it seems we have to learn the same lessons over and over, sometimes painfully, before we "get it."

So I ordered the book. I loved it. Feinberg is open, personable, and a good storyteller. She simply tells the story of the times in which themes have been repeated in her life, painful or otherwise, and takes the reader on the journey with her. I felt she spoke my language, but I think she was really speaking the common person's language.

What were some of the themes God sent her way in sacred echoes? She addresses ten of them, chapter by chapter: I love you, Sing it again, How long? Read it again, You follow me, If you don't wear your crown, Surrender, Take care of my people, Bring them to me, and You are not alone.

I started, after picking up this book, to look for sacred echoes in my own life. I shared the concept with the young women in my Bible study group, and they, too, have started paying attention to the sacred echoes. The messages are not always welcome, but they become clearer in the repetition, in the way in which they bounce around the walls of our lives.

Here are some quotes I underlined as I read the book, to give you a flavor of it:

And like an echo, God often uses the repetitive events and themes in daily life to get my attention and draw me closer to himself.

I call them sacred echoes because I noticed that throughout my relationships, daily life, and study, the same scripturally sound idea or phrase or word will keep reappearing until I can no longer avoid its presence.

If God can do so much with so few words, then I can't afford to miss a single one.

And finally, speaking of a woman in a dream she had, Margaret says:

She walked toward me, looking me straight in the eye. She held up her index finger and middle finger in the shape of a "V" and pointed at my eyes, then her own. Drawing a straight line back and forth between her eyes and my own, she said, 'This is the most important thing. If you lose this with Christ, you lose everything."

I have thought of that many times in the weeks since I read it. Wow. Are your eyes that well locked in with the gaze of Jesus, every moment of the day? What would life be like if they were?