by Kat Silverglate ©2025

We were sitting surrounded by thousands in a closed arena enveloped by this incredible sound. It was the kind of set up that has the stage at the center and the audience terraced to the heavens in chairs fixed to the stadium floor and each other. Gigantic speakers hung cathedral-like from the rafters, and the surround sound came as much from them as it did from the voices of the audience overpowering the professional vocalists at the center.

The worship music took you beyond the urge to sing-along to an unconscious closing of the eyes, movement of the body, lifting of the hands. When the musicians put down their instruments, a lone little woman took center stage filling the space with anticipation about what would happen next. She was so tiny in that spacious place, but the spotlight that followed her and the screens that projected her image magnified her message beyond her ability. Beyond her ability to know how the Lord would shift some entrenched beliefs that day.

For the next I-can’t-remember-how-many-minutes, the Christian dramatist Nicole Johnson performed an unabashedly-relatable, sometimes funny, deeply-moving monologue called The Invisible Woman. It was a commentary on how we can, at times, feel invisible in life. Like our actions are meaningless or not appreciated by others. Even seen. But at the core of her monologue, is a lamentation invited by comparing her life to the lives of others. She laments the seeming insignificance of her roles in comparison to those of a similar age. She’s in the childbearing years wiping snot, driving carpool, finding mismatched socks when she gets invited to a gathering of friends. Friends she views as infinitely more accomplished (and presumably therefore more valuable) than her:

And then, she tells the audience, that one of the women at the party handed her a gift from a recent trip she had taken to Europe – a book about great cathedrals – and hand-inscribed it with a personal note that took her completely by surprise:

 “With admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.” 

She goes home and she devours the book and is rocked by a story about a cathedral that reorders her concept of movements that we imagine are unrecognized in life. Here it is in the Invisible Woman’s words.

There’s a story in here about one of the builders who was carving a tiny bird inside a beam that would be covered over by a roof and someone came up to him and asked, ‘why are you spending so much time on something that no one will ever see?’ And it is reported that the builder replied... ‘because God sees’... Nicole Johnson, The Invisible Woman

But it wasn’t just the bird story that impacted her that day. The drama gives the listener the idea that it was the entry of that gift-giver with that gift at that time of personal discouragement that helped her see God as the great conductor orchestrating a moment of encouragement only He knew she needed.

I don’t know whether the drama was based on a true event in Nicole Johnson’s life, or whether she wrote it to creatively communicate a penetrating truth, but  that monologue by that dramatist in that season of my life – it rocked my notion of God’s symphonic movement in our day to day ordinary. Sure, I believed in his all-knowingness. His care about something as small as a sparrow. His choice to knit me uniquely in my mother’s womb. Even His awareness of the thoughts I hide so carefully in my heart. But directing my path that overtly? Sending instruments into the symphony of my one ridiculous life because He knows what I need, when I need it, and how the sudden surprise interjection will make me pause and look heavenward? Yes, I believe all those things; but why don’t I recognize them more? Why am I not more tuned-in? Looking for it? Ready to celebrate it?

I’m not alone in my lack. I know because writers have been magnifying our humanity in this respect for centuries. Glenn Clark in his book I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes tells us that these moments are abundant and frequent, but he says it with this caveat. God’s promises are much like blank checks. The more we pick them up and cash them, the more we come to depend on His faithfulness. And to recognize His mighty hand. Here’s how he says it.

The prayers he invites us to pray based on God’s promises in 1 John 5:15, 1 John 3:22 and John 15:16 – they call us to live in expectation of a symphonic intervention by instruments moving at the hand of the Most High. Here’s a condensed version of parts of his prayer.

What a beautifully expectant prayer. What a beautifully expectant way to live!

G.K. Chesterton uses a really funny parable to drive home the way deviations from our self-assured predictability point us toward seeing God’s fingerprints on life and away from complete dependence on our own power. I’m paraphrasing a section from Chapter 6 of Orthodoxy, maybe my all time favorite book. Suppose an alien comes to earth and discovers humans. Seeing matching eyes on the left and right side of the body, matching arms, matching legs, matching ears – the alien assumes that there will be a heart on the right to match the one on the left. But there won’t be one. Because, In Chesterton’s parlance, a paradox of our faith is the expectation of the unexpected from God. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy Ch 6, The Paradoxes of Christianity. In Ridiculous Hour parlance, it is the expectation of God’s intervention by way of a nudge, a poke, a prompt to move in the direction of His leading. To not just notice but to respond to Him.

The scriptures promise that it is God who works in us to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose. Phil 2:13. He constantly nudges us as as instruments of His great love. He is the great conductor of the symphony of our one ridiculous lives in Christ.  

When The Ridiculous Hour Foundation came into existence, we chose the name based on a picture of God’s constant intervention in our lives and the lives of others through His beloved instruments. Literally, we printed this paragraph on a card and sent it to people that we trusted to pray over the mission before we launched. Here’s a section from the original:

2025 will be full of interventions. Will you expect them? The who, what, when and where may be unexpected! But the intervention is a promise. Will we live with symphonic expectations? Will we expect to see His hand on our one ridiculous life? And will we respond to His nudges to be an instrument of His great love in the life of others. That is the tone we hope to set here at The Ridiculous Hour Foundation in 2025.

OUR 30-DAY RESPONSIVENESS CHALLENGE

Go ahead and find your mission pack and shake out those contents. If you aren’t receiving them in the mail, head on over to theridiculoushour.com and we’ll get one out to you right away. They are free.

In your pack, you’re gonna find a beautiful section of ribbon in the shape of a line of music filled with notes. Consider putting that in a visible spot where you can remind yourself to have symphonic expectations all month long. Expect for God to send the right people at the right time in the right measure. Expect Him to send you as the right person at the right time in the right measure.

Expect to join the symphony of His great love.

Also in your pack, you’ll find a musical score sheet with silver accents. You have 12 sections on the front page of that sheet, one for each month of 2025. As this month unfolds, can you note the times that you notice God intervening. Can you also note the times when He nudges you as well? Consider recording it in that first section. If you’d like to do this throughout the year, there are 11 more sections. You’d have to write really tiny if you wanted to do the whole year. Journal-sized books filled with these sheets are readily available on amazon and elsewhere. We've already started to fill ours! 

At the bottom of that music score sheet, you’ll will find a sticker that says “with love” because...

He does all things with great love.

Let's let Him conduct our symphonies.

Let's receive the instruments He sends.

Let's be His instrument when He calls.

Amen?

Amen!

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