| JANUARY 5, 2019 --
Many, if not most, of us have had the experience of being in a restaurant or other public place with a friend where the background noise was so loud that you could not hear what your friend was saying. Also a common problem for some of us is the experience of being so absorbed in what you are doing, reading a book or concentrating on a problem, that you are not aware of the fact that someone else is trying to get your attention. Or, what I’m seeing more and more of among some of our younger people, they have something plugged into their ear, listening to some mechanical device, such that they don’t hear you.
Our relationship with God has similar problems. We tend to be so absorbed in the activities of our daily lives that we don’t hear God speaking to us. God is speaking, but we don’t hear him, either because we are not paying attention, or because the “noise” of what is going around about us drowns out God’s voice or distracts us from hearing. Most of the time what God is saying only becomes clear if we can get away from the noise of the world. Do you remember the story of Elijah after he fled the wrath of Jezebel and fled to the caves of Mt. Carmel? In 1 Kings 19 we read:
“Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.1 After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.1 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.”
The voice of the Lord came to Elijah in a gentle whisper. From time to time, perhaps even daily, we need to escape from the noise and tumult of the world and find a place and a time when and where we can hear the gentle whisper of God’s word. A final word of advice: you cannot hear God’s voice if you spend all your time with him telling him what you want instead of being quiet and hearing what he wants you to do. |
