Ears to Hear

Reflections on the date of November 24, 1975

Dear Reader,

Looking over my first set of blogs, I feel satisfied. If someone had written them for me 50 years ago, I think I would have appreciated them and be mildly interested. Hope you feel the same.

But I realize that I might have left you with a question: “The blog says it’s by Robert Aleph. What’s up with that?”

To start with, I need to confess that I’m out there a bit. I do devote much of my attention to my own thoughts. As a cadet, I was a bit of a space cadet. It’s a useful trait for writers and sometimes for engineers. Not so much for athletes or fast-paced military operations.

Being a cerebral type, I find it hard to accept something I’m told to be truth as truth. I need to think it through for myself. But once I come to believe something, I’m all in.

My relationship with Jesus followed that pattern. I went to church with my family growing up and got the sense that there was something real about it but couldn’t quite buy in. The miracles were a stumbling block, especially as I came to better understand science and engineering. Then, at 28 years old, after a long string of bad choices, I was asked to accept Jesus as my lord and savior. I knew that I needed a savior but hesitated about the lord part. How could I say I was ready to follow Jesus when he didn’t seem to follow the laws of physics? My pastor wisely told me that I didn’t need to set aside every doubt; I just needed to put my trust in Jesus. Miraculously, I was able to do that, and my life was forever changed.

Fast forward 25 years, and I had grown much closer to the Jewish carpenter from Nazareth. The Bible made more sense to me, especially after learning about its historical context. I came to believe that the maker of all things, seen and unseen, has modes of action that are beyond my understanding.

So, my faith was growing. But my personal and professional life was crashing due to those yet-to-be addressed defects of character. Humbled, I felt driven to look more intently for the track line that would get me back on course. One celestial sighting came on a men’s retreat where we were encouraged to ask God to reveal our spiritual names to us. The sound that came into my mind was like “Ah loff”. This was weird because it’s not a name I’d ever heard before. Turned out that the sound in my brain was the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet, which is transliterated as “Aleph”, and it is sometimes used as a name. It also represents the letter one. As a name, it’s associated with leadership and teaching.

What I came to understand is that being a “space cadet”, although somewhat of liability, was a valuable part of my unique design. My over-active imagination could help me to see things that others may not have thought about, things that could bring them light, life and peace. I hope that I can do that for you.

In Christ,

Robert Aleph