You get tired of all the noise.
And the barrage of sound that wears you right down and who knew that the tumult of the daily grind can leave you tone deaf to God?
And then come these moments. These fleeting islands of time. In the hush after the freshening early morning rain or late under the star blankets or in one wide open field of summer dozing.
The stillness falls in surround sound.
You can hear your own perfectly thrumming heartbeat.
It’s only this moment.
But there it is:
Silence is a stethoscope up against the chest of the world and you can hear it clear: God is alive.
They walk wheat fields and I listen.
I listen. And I’m hearing.
The girls shell kernels in the palm of their hands and we walk the fields and their skirts stir the heads of wheat and they rustle with a memory:
“Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear…
But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it.
He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
The good soil is the one who hears the Word. Understands it. He does it and it produces a crop.
Is it this: The world can make noise with its idols, but the Lord is the only God who can whisper-speak to the soul?
The end of the day, before I turn out the light on the whirl, I reach for my Bible on the nightstand. I’ve been reading through Jeremiah. The prophet Jeremiah begging Judah to listen. Judah won’t. And Jeremiah cries with God over Judah, “But if you do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride.”
If they will not listen… God says He will not listen.
The house is quiet. I can hear the clock ticking in the kitchen: Listen. Listen.
People are always listening to something.
They say that. That you must listen for the Lord or the wagging tongue of the world will keep you deaf.
But I wonder if the opposite of hearing is not deafness but disobedience. We are always listening to something.
The girls had laughed in the wheat field, hung upside down and spun and laughed and the crop had rung with it and I had.
I fall asleep thinking about that.
The joy of listening to the whisper of the upside down Kingdom.
Whether you turn to the right or to the left,
your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying,
“This is the way; walk in it.“
Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart.To read the entire series of spiritual practices
Next Week: Consider sharing in community: The Spiritual Practice of Listening and Hearing God.Over the next three weeks, let’s prayerfully consider what it means to listen to the Lord… .. We look forward to your creative voice, ideas, thoughts!
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Photos: the girls walking wheat
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