You may not recognize the name of Liz Raphael Helgesen. But the chances are good that you are familiar with her voice. In fact, some people may hear her voice more often than that of their spouses or employer.
Helgesen’s is the smooth, comforting voice you are likely to hear if you dial a cell phone and the owner doesn’t answer. “To send a number, please press 2,” she says. Or, if you call the offices of AT&T or Bell South, or Georgia Power, or companies like Coca-Cola, IBM, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and a host of others, Helgesen’s is the voice you will hear asking you to select an option or record a message. She provides the voice you’ll hear at BP stations urging you to come inside for a snack.
The Cobb County resident is a voice-over artist who works from her home. As one of the most sought after voices in her profession, Helgesen earns well into six figures per year from her basement by recording messages that one in four Americans hear each day. As one advertising executive put it, “She just seems to have a voice everyone wants to hear.”
There is another voice more commonly available than Helgesen’s – and one more important for us to recognize. It is a voice that has been recorded in the very fabric of our universe:
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. Psalm 19:1-4
That voice became more personal and the message more precise in the person of Jesus Christ. To capture our attention and to direct it toward Jesus, the Father’s voice rang from heaven, “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” (Mark 9:7).
Our challenge is to hear – to listen. To recognize his voice, and the authority behind it. Ours is to hear what the Lord of Lords says to us about how we live, how we spend, how we speak, how we do everything.
The voice is always there. He is always speaking love and truth, guiding us to health, happiness, and an eternal home. Have you taken time to hear his voice today?

A Word from Williams Road is provided by the Williams Road Church.