Listening is different from hearing. There is sound all around us that we hear but don’t notice. Check it out. Sit still in a quiet room and listen, pay attention to the sounds you hear. You may hear the furnace turning on and off, the refrigerator or the washing machine working away, a clock ticking, someone walking in another room, the creaks of the house, your own breathing. As you listen, you may become aware of sounds outside: traffic going by, children playing, church bells ringing, an airplane overhead, birds singing, the wind in the trees. The sound was there all along. Your ears were hearing it, but you weren’t listening. Your attention was elsewhere. We all tune out what we’re not interested in at the moment so that we’re not distracted from the task at hand, what ever that may be. Too often what we tune out is the voice of God.

As a boy, the prophet Samuel discovered that if we want to hear what the Lord has to say to us, we have to listen, to pay attention, to be open and receptive to the message God has for us. When we begin to listen more deeply to God’s Word, to pay attention to what holy scripture is saying to us here and now, the Lord is delighted. The more we accept and act on God’s word, the more we begin to notice that word coming to us from all sorts of seemingly unlikely sources. Once we begin to listen, there is no limit to the ways God may speak to us. Sometimes we may experience the voice of God reaching us in and through creation, from other people, in the circumstances and situations of our lives, in the surprises of synchronicity, in the answering of prayer, in visions and dreams, in music, art, literature. You name it, God can use it.

When we are open to receive God’s word, when we listen with the ears of our heart, God’s voice comes to bring us encouragement, to bring us hope, to bring us understanding, to bring us a grateful heart, to bring us comfort and strength, to bring us peace, to bring us whatever we need day by day.

Speak, Lord, your servant is listening!