Who whispers to you? It must be someone to whom you are especially close, since physical closeness is required. Anything less would usually be described as my granddaughter would, “That’s creepy!”
The one who whispers to you is the one who loves you. Brides and grooms whisper their shared hope and joy as the reception whirls around them. Husbands and wives murmur to each other of their dreams coming and going. Parents speak softly with their children when it’s quiet enough to do so. The long, long married whisper as they share their memories, the ones that were always sweet and those which sweetened with time. We whisper near our dead beloved, for the formal love that is reverence, and a motherly and fatherly love for a newborn.
You know, though, it isn’t a good thing when you whisper about someone, or they whisper about you. The Bible is filled with warnings about that.
God whispers to you.
What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in the ear, proclaim on the housetops. –Matthew 10:27
Who whispered to Eve long before housetops?
It was the creature which is always depicted as having a whisper for a voice. But his whispers are never spoken in light. They never carry words of love unless they suggest that to love yourself is the greatest love of all. That’s how he feels, and he fell from Heaven because of it. When he whispers in your ear, it’s not really for you to hear. You are nothing to him. Rather, through your ears the Devil whispers to God His Creator, as the liar and coward he was since the beginning.
And when their eyes are opened, Death is all around. Death enters the world on a whisper.
Jesus went into the desert, which had once been a garden. Satan whispered into his ear as well, but now he faced the New Adam, the Son of God.
The word of God provides me with everything. I have no need of stony bread or forbidden fruit. I do not fear death. If I don’t yet understand it, I trust that He knows for me. I need nothing you say you can give me. I need to serve Him who made all and to whom all belongs.
Then Jesus dismissed him as someone who is nothing. “Get away from me, Satan!” He introduced the Devil to the Serpent inside, and the liar and coward from the beginning ran away.
Many consider Satan to be the greatest of evil geniuses. But he is a simpleton. What else could explain the psyche of an angel thinking he could depose his Creator? But his lack of creativity and sanity has served him well.
Every diabolical temptation follows the same script.
“What do you have?”
“What do you want?”
“What would you like to do?”
“Then go ahead!”
“Nothing bad will happen to you.”
And then on a whisper, Death enters the world.
Jesus tells those who refuse to believe him:
Why do you not understand what I am saying? Because you cannot hear my word. You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. — John 8:43-44
