297. Signs, Coincidences, and Divine Guidance- What's On Our Mind?

Scott shares a story about his brother Lee, a simple text message, and a dream that made the timing feel almost impossible to ignore.

In this episode of What’s On Our Mind, Jerry L. Martin and Scott Langdon talk about signs, coincidences, and divine guidance in everyday life. They reflect on the ways God may come to us through other people, intuition, prayer, art, and unexpected moments that seem to carry a meaning of their own.

Scott also talks about the anxiety that can come with trying too hard to figure out what God wants, while Jerry considers the importance of becoming quiet enough to listen and notice what is already in front of us.

Are some coincidences more than coincidence? And how do we know when a passing moment, a sudden nudge, or an unexpected connection might be pointing us toward something more?

Related Episodes:

296. What's Your Spiritual Story? The Search for Truth with Alex Woollends

295. God’s Reason for Being - Radically Personal Finale

294. Romantic Love, God’s Love, and What Makes Love Real | Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue

293. Feeling God’s Love Through Other People- From God to Jerry to You

288. You’re Not Alone: How God Speaks Through Other People- From God to Jerry to You

Get the books:

Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

***Ultimate Questions***

Listen to the full episode and explore the question with a community of philosophers and seekers.

Join the Ultimate Questions conversation on calling and divine guidance: https://substack.com/@ultimatequestions

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue. 

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Transcript

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:00:17,229 ]This is God: An Autobiography, The Podcast — a dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin. He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered — in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:00:58,179 ]Episode two ninety seven. Welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. I'm Scott Langdon, the host of the program and every fifth episode, the co-host of our longest running series, What's on Our Mind. This week, Jerry Martin and I talk about how God comes to us. How an encounter with another is also, in one sense, an encounter with God. I tell the story of something beautiful that happened between my brother Lee and me, and how God was in the midst of that communication. We also talk about being open, and how being quiet and taking in God's presence means everything to God. Here's what's on our mind this week. I hope you enjoy the episode.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:01:57,809 ]Welcome back everybody to another edition of What's on Our Mind. I'm Scott Langdon. I'm with Jerry Martin as always. And What's on Our Mind is such a rare treat for me because when we have what we call a unit of episodes, we start out with From God to Jerry to You. We have Jerry and Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue. And then the Radically Personal series, which this past episode was the ninth in that series and we are super excited to hear some more about that. I'm going to put a pin in that and talk about it later.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:02:30,749 ]But then we have the What's Your Spiritual Story series, and finally the fifth type of episode or series in a unit is this one, What's on Our Mind. And typically what Jerry and I do is we go back to those episodes in the unit and pick some things that are kind of juicy, that are on our mind that we like to chat about. And I'm excited to do that this week. And I wanted to zero in a little bit more on how God comes to us, how God makes God's self available to us and known to us.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:03:03,109 ]Yeah, Scott, that that's a very good question and that was really in a way the focus of the entire unit as you described the unit.I just revisited the episodes and we human beings are down here on planet Earth walking around on two feet with people around us and God seems very distant. If you take God: An Autobiography seriously, you know, you were quoting this to me the other day… I say why are You so hidden? It's a sort of complaint early in the book. Why are You so hidden?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:03:43,759 ]And God says, "I'm not hidden. You see Me everywhere, all the time." You know. And what is that? Well, part of it is that if you ask what the world's made of, well, it's kind of made of God stuff, basically. That's the essential material of the world. But He says you got to, God told me, you've got to learn to look in with sort of God eyes, with with your divine eyes to see God, to take that in. And a lot of people don't actually want to do that, you know, you're too tied to the ground, to your earthly preoccupations to want to relax and see the divine aspect, you might say, of the world. And, so that raised the next question of how does God communicate with us? And God said, oh, there are a lot of ways. You know, I hear a voice, but that's not typical. God wanted me to write a book, so He spoke to me in a voice. But it comes in all kinds of ways, but mainly through one another. And we were focusing in this particular group of episodes on how does God love us?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:04:59,239 ]God's way up there somewhere, distant or kind of abstract. You know, God's love is it just sort of an atmosphere that we're supposed to breathe or something? What is that?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:05:12,479 ]But concretely, the answer in one prayer was, when I was asking God to show me God's love in a perilous moment, He said, let, let Abigail love you. Feel My love through her. And so I took that to be a kind of signal of, ah, we need to pay attention to how we love one another. And that's a form of God's love that we can appreciate down here on earth with two feet on the ground and surrounded by each other.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:05:50,669 ]That's more tactile and visceral and visual. And, so here we are with that challenge, and then where you go next, is a question.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:06:04,899 ]Yeah, and it's also there's a flip side of that in a way too, that we encounter God perhaps through other people, through nature, maybe through works of art, through intuition, through dreams, those things that God talks about. Also though, God encounters us that way. So as other, God loves us. You know, I heard I think one of the earliest songs I can remember as a child is Jesus Loves Me this I Know. Now how do I know that? Well according to the song, for the Bible tells me so, and that was all I needed to know at the time. But as I got older and got more able to question and dig in and want to know deeper answers, I started to ask, Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so is not enough. How do I know Jesus loves me? How do I know God loves me? What does that mean? What does that look like?

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:07:14,459 ]And if I think about how I want to love the ones I want to love the most, my wife, my children, my granddaughter, my friends, when I feel that compulsion to really do whatever it takes to show that love, demonstrate that love, I think God must feel that same way about me, about you, about all of us, that He must have that feeling on his side as well. And so when God loves us, God is encountering us individually as we are.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:07:51,229 ]Yeah, I'm not sure I quite understand how you're thinking of God, it sounds like a God's predicament, the way you stated it. Am I understanding it correctly?

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:08:02,099 ]Well, if God comes to us as a person, and of course we understand He's so much more than a person, but if I love my wife person to person, there's my personhood and my wife's personhood and there's I'm encountering my wife almost as a separate entity in that sense, and I'm seeing the distinct things that my wife only my wife can bring to my world and my consciousness. And so in that sense, when God encounters me, when God loves me specifically, not just, oh, God loves everyone, but God loves Scott, God is encountering Scott in a relationship way as an other.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:08:44,249 ]Yeah. Well, that I mean that's part of the you might say a paradoxical feature of God: An Autobiography of the big picture that you get from reading my dialogues with God, that God is both in one sense the god stuff the universe is made of and that we are made of, and God infuses everything and is very very very large in that sense and pervasive.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:09:17,669 ]On the other hand, there is a personal aspect to God, and that personal aspect is intensely personal, down to that level as you say, Scott, God loves Scott. God loves Jerry. God loves Abigail. God loves, you know, each person, not in some generic, oh, I love all people, you know, that a very humanistic person might say in a rapturous moment, I love everybody. Well, no, but that's some generic statement.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:09:51,719 ]No, God loves us in an intensely personal way, has an intensely personal relationship with each of us, is living God's life through our lives, and values the interaction. And in fact, part of the big story in God: An Autobiography is God grows, develops through the interaction, changes. You know, we pray and ask God to do something. Ah, God does it. You know, which God would not have done otherwise. I mean, prayer changes God, just that prayer relationship.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:10:27,689 ]God has heard a request and may not fulfill the request in our terms, but God is taking it in and is affected by that. And then God grows the way everybody grows through relationships and the interactions with different kinds of people. God is growing through the interactions with all different kinds of people and with animals and the rest of nature too, but especially with people.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:10:58,089 ]The way God shows up. And I use that terminology because it interests me, it's fun to me to think of when someone shows up, I like that. I like to be surprised. I like to be greeted by, you know, my parents were able to come to see seventeen seventy six.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:11:21,369 ]Nice

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:11:22,299 ]In May and they live in Oklahoma now and they retired down there with my brother Dan. 

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:11:30,449 ]They were able to come up and see. So they didn't surprise me the day of, but maybe a couple of days beforehand. So I was pleased to see them show up and I think about that kind of a feeling. So when I think of God showing up, I think of among other things being pleasantly surprised to have an encounter, let's say. So it could be something as seemingly trivial as a convenience store clerk.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:11:59,789 ]Who we happen to chat about something or whatever and have a little moment, which is, you know, which is lovely. And maybe I'm somebody at the gym that I have a chat with. This happened just the other day, you know, we're talking and I got some insight on something that I had been thinking about and pondering just from the conversation. This person has no idea, I don't think, that they had this kind of influence on me, but I take that extra bit of oomph almost as a God encounter.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:12:31,919 ]Sure. Yeah, it is.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:12:34,279 ]I mean, that's how one way God comes through. God, our own lives are God-infused and God energized, you might say, as if the electricity that has to flow through our bodies and into our lives and sense of of purpose and openness and ability to relate to to others, our empathetic capacities, which are actually quite extraordinary, and our ability to care about a random stranger, which we do have that capacity.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:13:10,759 ]You don't care all the time because you don't have the mental space trying to, you know, get your car fixed or something. But we do have a wonderful capacity that I think is divinely energized to relate to one another and to be interested in one another and to take another person's suffering or just their life situation. Oh, you're having a birthday party, that's great. Who's coming. You know, just these casual interactions are deeply meaningful to us because we have a fundamental capacity to care about each other. And, so in a way discussions of God loving us start with these much more ordinary relationships that we have that are relationships of kindness and or just of interest, you know, a conversation where you're actually listening to the other person, actually sharing something, not just, oh, is it going to rain today, but actually sharing something of your life in a quick momentary way like with somebody at the gym. This is all very significant and it's all God permeated.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:14:22,619 ]And in my view that it has an almost magical quality, which I think is a divine element, and God is right in there taking all that in, and you might say benefiting from it.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:15:09,079 ]We talk about being in tune with God often, and I think about that when I think about this. There's a phenomenon, I can't remember the name of it right now, but like if I buy a blue Honda Accord, then all of a sudden I start seeing blue Honda Accords everywhere on the highway, right? That kind of thing. Also with let's say YouTube. I like to be on YouTube a lot and watch different videos of things. And you can see on the right side of the screen the suggested videos. And the algorithm puts them up there based on what you seem to be liking or watching, you know. So you can get a quick idea of, oh, where have I been lately, just by kind of looking at those suggested videos, right? So it seems to be...

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:16:02,099 ]very connected to where we focus our attention, where maybe that seems to be our responsibility or where we can have some degree of, I don't know if control is the right word I want to use, but perspective, let's say. And I say that because I think about certain situations, like let's say at the gym where I might be having a chat with somebody like I did and they say something that they may not even know influences me.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:16:29,999 ]If I'm not kind of tuned to that. If I'm not thinking about whatever it was that jump-started me to the next level, if I'm not already sort of engaged in that, it may not hit me. I may not be open for it. I may not be available to say, "Oh, God is giving me this message somehow." Because I know for me, I often think, you know, what do I have to go to next? What am I doing?

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:16:56,749 ]What do I think about the future? I think about the past. Oh, I wish I would have done this or this or maybe I'll do this next time or and it seems that when I'm most sort of quiet and available and when I ask a question that you like to ask every morning, you know, what do You want me to do today?

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:17:16,999 ]I can ask that question. I've asked that question since I was an eight-year-old boy, but I always think it's followed by What is it? What is it? What is it? What do You want me to do?

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:17:26,799 ]Now I need to know what it is, right? Instead of just sort of letting it be. And then if I feel like if I'm tuned to the just quiet and tuned to things, I start to pick up these frequencies. I think God is talking to me here. I think God is guiding me in this way. A question that gave me angst, this person seems to have brought some semblance of an answer or at least another place to to look.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:17:53,499 ]Yeah, that's interesting. One of the things that's almost a panic response you describe in praying, what do You want me to do today? I sometimes say, and I guess we've talked about this, that you have to get the distractions out of the way. An awful lot of that is just emotional overflow.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:18:17,999 ]And it's irrelevant, you're not listening well. You're asking God, "What do You want me to do today?" but you're not really tuned in, listening. You're kind of grasping at air, you know. Am I supposed to lunge this way or that way? Or is it something I did yesterday going to make it impossible now for me to do what God wants? No, no.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:18:40,009 ]And I sometimes sum this up as a clarified soul. You need a clarified soul, and that doesn't, my view and in my way of using the concept, doesn't mean you've got to go with a guru and become some high lama or something. It just means get quiet and get these distractions out of your mind and just focus on what you're trying to focus on. If you want to know from God what You want me to do today, you'd have to stop thinking about all these other things and stop worrying over who you are and how you are and you know, all these self-preoccupations.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:19:20,349 ]And just listen, take it in.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:19:24,239 ]And if something comes to you, fine, trust that that's probably God giving you a hint. You know? It probably won't be a voice like mine, but you get some feeling, some we talk about it being a nudge sometimes. And you just have this sense after prayer or meditation, ah, or just some quiet time. Ah, I think this is what God wants me to do.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:19:50,469 ]And then do it. And then do it and you're in concert with God, you're in sync with God when you do that.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:19:58,729 ]When God comes to us, I always feel like God is coming to us lovingly, with a loving intention. I think that's in a sense what God is, loving intention. So we are here in a world where every one of us is working with suffering of some kind. And God knows that, acknowledges that, and says suffering is as real a thing as people who have turned against me because of it think it is. It's that bad. And I'm right there with you.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:20:34,269 ]And I I think about being right there with you when I think about playing a character, like I've said before, in Death Trap when I played this man named Sidney Bruhl, I could see that every action he was taking was just going to lead to a disaster, you know. And I was compelled, part of me is compelled to get in why can't God stop these things that are tragedies, you know. I think that about Sidney Bruhl. Sidney, why couldn't I stop you from making these terrible decisions, you know. So I have a sense even if it's in a metaphorical way, I have a an idea I think of how God might often feel about poor choices that I make or struggling things I might do, you know, if you could pause and stop and turn around and ask me what you could do for me today, maybe it would be different. I don't know.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:21:33,069 ]It's a big scenario, but one of the things that is certain is that when God comes to us in a loving intentional way, it's not always necessarily to give us an instruction to write a book or to do this or to do that. And I have just this wonderful example of this that just happened to me the other day. It is July 31st, Friday, July 31st as we're recording this two days ago on Wednesday. I was driving my car alone, running some errands, and I got to a stop light.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:22:08,629 ]And it was pretty deep and several cars ahead of me and it was going to take a while. And I was sitting there and I looked on the dashboard in the center console. And I have a little digital clock as most of us do in our car and it said three thirty-seven.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:22:26,049 ]My brother, my youngest brother, is named Lee. Lee Langdon. And Lee lives in Oklahoma City. He with his wife Amy. They have four beautiful brilliant children. They're all grown and out of the house now, so he and Amy spend, you know, a good deal of time together, living that empty nest and loving it. And Lee is a minister in Oklahoma City at the Memorial Road Church of Christ. And he and I don't get to see each other very often because he lives in Oklahoma City and I live here in Bristol. But one of the things that has been going on, I don't know, the past few years in this sort of digital media, social media age, is that when you look at the numbers 337. So 337 on a clock in the afternoon, if you turn that upside down, it says LEE.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:23:23,919 ]So 337, you flip it upside down, it says Lee, and someone pointed that out a few years ago to my brother or maybe he saw it. And so every once in a while as a joke, he might take a picture of gasoline at 337 a gallon and say, "Hey, my name is everywhere. Lee, see? 337, flip it upside down." Well, I see the clock and it's 3:37 p.m. and I think of Lee. 3:37.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:23:48,719 ]And something inside of me said, or I got this nudge or however we want to say it, this feeling of take a picture of that and text it to Lee and tell him you love him. I mean, why not?

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:24:02,919 ]So I did. I just grabbed my phone real quick, which was right there in the holder. I just took a picture of the dashboard and I texted it to Lee and I said, Hey Lee, thinking about you. I love you and I'm very proud of you.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:24:16,109 ]Ten minutes later, he texts me back and he says, Scott, these words mean a lot to me. He said, the other night I had a dream that you and I were walking arm in arm and you said to me, I love you and I'm very proud of you. And I woke up from that dream and I told Amy, his wife, he said, I told Amy all about it. And then here today, you just did that. You just said, sent this and were thinking about me and said, I love you and I'm very proud of you.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:24:47,809 ]And I just, you know, put a heart on that heart emoji on that text and just I haven't talked to him about it since or whatever, but that really I took that in. I thought, that is a God encounter. I mean, it's just a coincidence and you can say that, but I say it was this feeling of I want to tell my brother that I love him and he means a great deal to me. And somehow God was prepping that. God was stirred up in that as a thread, as the spoon, as the whole kit and caboodle, the whole pot. I don't know, but God was absolutely wrapped up in it all.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:25:25,079 ]Yeah, you’re God's messenger isn't quite the right language here. It's as if I was told this about one point when I felt great pride, God's talking to me, wants me to write this stuff. And God says, look, you're no more important than the paint that Leonardo, I guess, happened to use in painting the Mona Lisa. Well, paint is just paint, you know. That it makes it to a great work of art. That's just good luck.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:25:58,939 ]But it's just paint. I'm just paint, just an instrument. And it's an expressive, we are in part expressive instruments, as if, you know, you're a quill that God can use or whisper through your voice a message to your brother. And it's hard to know what metaphor to use here, but it's we are expressive instruments of God's love and God's other kind of concerns and attitudes as well. But most importantly perhaps of God's love, because God does love.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:26:38,769 ]God loves Lee.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:26:40,399 ]But how is God going to let Lee know that? Well, prompt Scott. Maybe send a dream first, you know, and then so that it'll be really noticed when Scott says it, you know. And, that may be one of the roles of these so-called coincidences, they do draw our attention to something. And, those aren't coincidences merely, they're expressive devices, like rhetorical devices, to get people's attention to put a point across.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:27:18,749 ]And so your love came through to him and no doubt a vivid and impactful way. And so that was God's way of reaching Lee. God probably loves not only loves Lee, God is probably also proud of Lee.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:27:37,029 ]When I think about being available to be an instrument of God, sometimes I feel a similar way to what you were mentioning. Oh, me, ha ha ha ha, you know, no, you're the paint. Okay, okay.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:27:50,959 ]But sometimes though, I I get a little bit overwhelmed with the, and you mentioned this as well in your experience, sort of a Moses situation where I'm not worthy, I shouldn't, don't try to call on me for this, this doesn't seem to be my thing. And God says, you know, I will decide what that looks like. You just be available.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:28:13,819 ]You be the instrument. So when I think about whose life is God trying to reach through me, I start to think, well, what does that look like? Like what do I have to do? Like what do I have to be available for? Am I being available but not? I mean, here I am at work, maybe I should be out on the street somewhere.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:28:36,319 ]And I start to sort of panic instead of being easy and seeing the little things like this situation with my brother as not an instruction, but this is what love looks like and I am wrapped up in it. I gave your brother a dream to reinforce, like it's all wrapped up, it's all okay. And if you're willing, it seems to me, God is saying if you're willing to be an instrument, I'll take care of the where and the when and the how.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:29:18,949 ]I'll be available. I was driving past this overpass, this highway goes over this little stretch of this bit of river by my house. And it was the middle of the day and I had my camera next to me. And I pulled over because I could see the shadows and the light kind of dancing around underneath this bridge. And I went down and I said, this looks like a black and white kind of situation. And so I took my camera and I shot several pictures of the bridge and the shadows in black and white.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:29:53,099 ]And when I took them back to my house and put them up on my computer and looked at them, what I realized was that the light and the shadows were making what looked like arrows going the same direction. So it looked like there were all of these arrows, these in light cutting into the darkness of the shadows, all pointing in this direction. And it didn't mean that I suddenly went, aha, I know exactly what I have to do now.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:30:24,129 ]It just meant to me when I was available to just use my camera and be in the moment and should I look at this, should I look at that, and just sort of having this moment with, I believe it's God, in the same kind of way we've talked about making the podcast, you know, this looks like the picture, this maybe not, oh look over here, and just being quiet with it. And then when I looked at it later, these arrows that were pointing and it was like, I've got you. This direction is the right one. Now you could say I made that meaning up. Okay. And yet it's based on experience.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:31:03,539 ]It's based on how I want to feel, which is confidence, secure and at ease, at peace, not agitated, not grabbing or scraping or clutching. So if this moment and this little bit of art, these pictures that I made, make me feel like I'm okay and I'm at peace, I take that as a God communication.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:31:29,899 ]Well, I think you're absolutely on target there. It seemed obvious to me from the beginning of your relating this that God was saying you're on the right track. These arrows all cutting through the darkness in one direction. I mean, what else could that mean? And people make the mistake sometimes, the people who talk about coincidences all that time and making stuff up and projection and all of that misunderstand the nature of reality. Reality is not just a pile of facts, of meaningless bits and pieces, you know, like a stack pile of dust, you know, or rubble.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:32:09,419 ]Reality, if you take in its falseness and don't have a reductionist attitude, is full of meaning. And what our job is to take in the world with its meanings. And you know, look at just human history and the rise and fall of civilizations. These are enormous levels of memory. They're not just a pile of pointless events.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:32:43,439 ]And you look at the biography of a person, the life curvature, and it's most notable in, people like Helen Keller and and I don't know, Winston Churchill and and Tennyson and so on and great musicians because we study their careers and we see the meaningfulness. And at one point I was praying about just music. And you know, God was since I was struggling over this, how do these things have meaning? And God was somehow saying, you know, think a piece of music, a symphony has meaning. It's not just, you know, there's that in Amadeus, the movie about Mozart, somebody says, oh, the emperor or somebody says, your music has too many notes.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:33:36,359 ]He says, "Oh, which ones do you want me to delete?" You know. Well, it's not just a bunch of notes. You know, it's got arcs of meaning in it. And formal meaning and semantic meaning, meaning in the sense of the drama of the music. And, so it is with the rest of our lives. And so you got to open your mind and your heart. And the open mind here is not to be uncritical. Of course, you've got to figure things out.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:34:10,949 ]Even detecting patterns of meaning requires cogitation, some process. You've got to take it in and then figure it out. But you should be figuring it out to connect the dots, not to just say, the dots have no connection.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:34:29,449 ]Once again, Jerry, I really enjoy what we talk about. This was great. Thank you.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin

[ 00:34:34,129 ]Okay. Thank you, Scott.

Scott  Langdon

[ 00:35:00,839 ]Thank you for listening to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. Subscribe for free today wherever you listen to your podcasts and hear a new episode every week. You can hear the complete dramatic adaptation of God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin by beginning with Episode 1 of our podcast and listening through its conclusion with Episode 44. You can read the original true story in the book from which this podcast is adapted — God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher — available now at amazon.com, and always at godanautobiography.com. Pick up your own copy today. If you have any questions about this or any other episode, please email us at questions@godanautobiography.com, and experience the world from God’s perspective — as it was told to a philosopher. This is Scott Langdon. I’ll see you next time.