“When was the last time you just closed your eyes and just listened?” ~ Maxime Lagace
The world is a very noisy place and we rather quickly come to the conclusion that we need to raise our voices rather loud in order to be heard. There is always commotion around us. Wherever we go, noise intrudes. To combat the noise, we just get noisier. How many times have we ever thought, “It’s so noisy here that I can’t even hear myself think.” I know I have said that on more than one occasion when going out to dinner with friends or, sometimes, even to a movie.
Because of the noise around us, we have grown accustomed to shutting out everything around us. I have seen people with televisions blaring in the background calmly working on puzzles or reading a book. The noise might be deafening but they act as if it were not even there. Why? Because they have become accomplished at tuning the noise out.
The major problem with that is the fact that we often go to the extreme and tune everything out. I have heard about and read about instances where people were seriously injured because they called out and no one heard them. I remember walking “next door” to Subway a few years ago after my first hip replacement. As I was nearing the store, someone got in their car, turned on their radio, put their car in gear, and started backing out and turning their car right into me. I was shouting at them to stop and didn’t get their attention until I started pounding on their bumper. The car stopped right before it had a chance to knock me down and run over me. It was a rather frightening experience.
If we are so far gone that we have tuned out the noise of the world, I often wonder if the whispering voice of God stands any chance at all. We have got to learn to listen. The only way to do that is to go silent. Turn off all distractions, put away any visual distraction, and try to listen to the Lord. He does speak. He is speaking. The big question is whether or not we hear Him or, for that matter, even want to hear Him.
FAITH ACTION: Create time in your schedule today to do nothing more than sit in silence and allow the Lord the opportunity to speak to your heart.