I remember a talk given by a physical trainer. She was explaining how important it is to know your own particular make-up in developing a workout routine.

“As a trainer, I am often asked, ‘What is the best exercise?’ My answer is always the same: ‘The best exercise is the one you will do.’”

The best way of connecting with God is the one that actually connects. I have always found it unhelpful to be given a spiritual formula that would, supposedly, keep me close to God. But while I found it to be unhelpful, I continued in it any, too afraid to say that the spiritual emperor had no clothes. Only as I have grown older have I found the honesty to say: that just doesn’t connect me to God.

For example, I am wired to connect with God through deep meditation, through the study of the physical world, and through the experience of travel. These are the connections that are “live” for me. In the words of my blue collar father, they have the “juice.” On the other hand, I find the use of devotional materials to be a dead outlet. Simply reading the Bible, with no other circuit built around it is dead as well. (There I said it.)

I no longer believe that God speaks only to a few lucky souls. But to hear God requires understanding how you as a unique person are wired to hear, letting go of someone else’s expectations of how you “should” hear, and celebrating your own distinctive, miraculous spiritual circuitry.

You may be wired as a heaven-gazing Magi, or a action-oriented Joseph, or a contemplative shepherd. Advent is a time for discovering what kind of ears God has given you so that when Christ comes and speaks to you, as the truckers used to say, you will “have your ears on.” Or as Jesus put it, “Let him who has ears, hear…”

Christ comes to us…at all speeds.