It usually happens this way. Lorraine gets sick and after two or three days, she is well. A couple days after her recovery, I come down with what she had, but instead of three days, recovery seems to take three months for me. Oh well. At least it’s not three years.

This happened during the current sick season. Lorraine felt ill enough to stay home, which for her is like a hundred-year snow event. I started to feel symptoms before she recovered fully. I seemed okay when we went to work this morning. In the staff kitchenette one of my co-workers said I sounded “a little throaty,” but by the time staff meeting rolled around and it was my turn to talk about what I’m working on, sounds came out of my mouth.

I looked up. Everyone was very kind, but I could tell by their expressions what they were thinking. Wil sounds like Linda Blair in The Exorcist minus the cursing.

Every year it seems that at least once, I’m confronted with a pretty horrific literal physical voice.

So, then I go to see our new doctor. The old one retired but before he did so, he was trying to tell us that oranges are bad to eat. Oranges. I grew up in southern California before the locusts of lower cost housing tracts ate up all the orange groves. Back then it was farm country. A peeled orange was nature’s vitamin boost that tasted better than just about anything. Well, ok, not counting See’s candy.

But this new doctor—he’s not anti-orange. In one of my first visits with him, I fumbled through my coat pocket and pulled out a jar of hot fudge sauce. Handing it to him, I explained, “We make this every Christmas and give it away.” He takes it, not quite sure what to say. It’s not a bribe, just a little gift we share with friends. He says thanks in a way that says he doesn’t quite know what to say. But he’s in a hurry. He’s on the clock, time for the next person.

He’s married and he and his wife had their first baby back in the fall. A girl.

Then Lorraine went to see him. She found out he’s Roman Catholic in background but not practicing. They live in Batavia, but maybe they’ll move closer. Maybe he should think about it. He’s examining us, but we are learning about him, too.

So, this last Christmas, on another visit from me, he’s happy to see another jar of hot fudge sauce. He remembers it from the previous Christmas. He tells me the kind of ice cream he has at home that he’s going to put it on tonight and eat it.

It’s Jesus, I want to say. I mean, this good stuff—it’s because of Jesus.

I think about his coming to College Church. Maybe he’ll bring his family. Maybe God will enter the picture.

In my dream, he does come. He waits in line to drop off his daughter in kindergarten. I see him in men’s Bible study at a round table in a room that seems like the Crossings but somehow, it’s the Commons, too. He prays with people. His wife turns out to be even nicer than he. And there they all are in a pew in church. His kids are dedicated. He’s elected to some position at an annual meeting. But then he’s a missionary doctor in a country I don’t know, a place where it’s summer in winter, a place where there isn’t any snow. And then he shows up in the dead of winter to treat someone at a free clinic by the little church I know in Maloyaroslavets, Russia, where we used to volunteer in summer camps with the children, but it’s snowing and so cold that when I’m walking on the path to the apartment where we’re living, my exhaled breath turns to icicles that fall to the ground and shatter on the pavement. I go to see the doctor, and he tells me to drink hot water with lemon and honey. You know how dreams can be.

“Don’t be afraid,” I want to say, when I see a person’s eyes go grey as soon as I start to speak of Jesus. God isn’t going to hurt you. It’s not like that.

Salvation is a jar of chocolate that you can’t buy in a store.

Whatever I dream of for James (the doctor’s first name)—I like to think someday I might call him Jim—is nothing compared to the good that God has in store. I can’t even dream it. But I do have a voice—even a raspy one—that can speak.

But “voice” isn’t only a sound; when it comes to grammar, voice can be active or passive. A seminary-grad friend of mine confessed to me that he never understood this concept. When he would show me something he had written and I told him that he had a lot of passive voice in it, which he always did, he confessed to me that he just could never get “that voice thing.”

With active voice, the subject does the action. Jesus died for my sins. Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus saves.

With passive voice, the subject does not do the action; the action is done to the subject. I am saved by grace. I am given faith to believe. I will be given words to speak when I do not know what to say.

I do manage to squeeze in that Lorraine and I are writing a book, a little Lent book. The doctor confesses that he doesn’t read as much as he should. And then he’s off to something or someone else. Will one of us have to get sick to give him a copy, or can we just show up?

It's not that Jesus needs me to save a person. Thank goodness that’s on him. After all, I am not even the subject of my life. That’s Jesus. He doesn’t need me; I need him. God’s voice speaks into my life. God’s voice speaks meaning and purpose.

“Therefore my people shall know my name. Therefore in that day they shall know that it is I who speak; here I am.”

How beautiful upon the mountains
    are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
    who publishes salvation,
    who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

Isaiah 52:6-7

Will I find my voice in 2026? Will I sound like Linda Blair, or will I sing like James Taylor or Jamal Sarikoki? God can give me beautiful words. I have only to speak them to those around me.

The voice of your watchmen—they lift up their voice;
    together they sing for joy;
for eye to eye they see
    the return of the Lord to Zion.
Break forth together into singing,
    you waste places of Jerusalem,
for the Lord has comforted his people;
    he has redeemed Jerusalem.
Isaiah 52:8-9

Jesus, this year help my words and my life point people to your words, to your tree, your shepherd, your rescuer, your life, to the Living Word that makes all things new.

Here am I. Send me.