When God Writes in the Margins

We expect God to write in the center of the page. We expect the divine communication to arrive in the bold text, in the main narrative, in the obvious and central and unmistakable places where important things are written, where the reader knows to look, where the significance announces itself through its position alone. We have been shaped, by a thousand religious experiences and a thousand sermons and a thousand testimonies from people who received their burning bush and their Damascus road and their voice from heaven, to look for God in the headline. In the dramatic. In the thing that interrupts the ordinary flow of the story with enough force that no interpretation is required, no sustained attention demanded, no quiet and patient reading necessary. The message is large. The font is impossible to miss. The margin has nothing to do with it.