DAILY BYTE
A Bishop was visiting a church where the worship service began with the age-old traditional greeting of ‘The Lord be with you.’ However, the sound system was playing up and so he lifted his hands in an attempt to get the attention of the sound desk and said:
“There’s something wrong with this silly microphone!”
To which the congregation, not having heard him properly, obediently replied, “And also with you.”
Listening, truly hearing what others have to say is a vital part of human life that very few of any generation take seriously enough. Did you know how much of the Bible is just trying to attract our attention, to get us to stop and listen to what we truly need to hear?
The brilliant theologian, with a classic theologian’s name, Dr. Klaus Bockmuehl, once said: “The entire Bible is a record of God’s speaking into human history.”
God has been constantly sending angels, messengers, prophets and even his own Son to effectively say: “Listen up! There is something important you really have to hear!”
As the ex Arch Bishop of Canterbury, Dr. Donald Coggan, wrote: “Christians believe in a God who speaks. Ours is not a silent God, a God who sits, sphinx-like, looking out unblinking on a world in agony ... He speaks because he loves. Love always seeks to communicate.”
This is Good News for us. God cares enough about each of us to be speaking into our lives his words of grace and hope. The only problem is, like the congregation who misheard their Bishop, we often don’t listen very carefully at all to what God might be saying.
This is why we will spend the rest of this week’s devotions focussing on the topic of listening. Listening, as we have already mentioned, is a vitally important spiritual discipline that we just don’t put enough focus on.
How much attention do you pay to the discipline of listening? Have you recently been sensing God trying to communicate something to you? Or are you of the opinion that God seems to speak clearly to everyone but you?
Whatever your feelings may be, bring them to God in the following prayer.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious Father, you are constantly sending messengers of hope and signs of your love. We confess to you how little attention we pay to learning how to listen, to discerning and understanding. We ask that you would use this week to develop this skill within us. In Jesus name. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Matthew 13.14 NRSV
With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says:
‘You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look but never perceive.’
