Listen! Can you hear the birds waking up the morning?

God is here.

Listen! Can you hear the breeze wafting through the full leafed trees?

God is here.

Listen! Can you hear the stream bubbling across the rocks and down the hill?

God is here.

Listen! Can you hear the rain coming nearer and nearer until all is drenched?

God is here.

Listen! Can you hear the ocean lapping on the shore as the tide comes in?

God is here

Listen! Can you hear the lawn mower cutting the grass next door?

God is here.

Listen! Can you hear the tractor plowing up the field nearby ?

God is here.

Listen! Can you hear the garbage truck trundling up to take the away the refuse?

God is here.

Listen ! Can you hear the sound of the ambulance siren coming closer and closer?

God is here.

Listen! Can you hear the church bells ringing the hours across the street ?

God is here.

Most often, likely not! We can't hear because we don't listen. We don't listen because we don't pay attention to the Reality that underlies the surface situations in our lives. We don't pay attention because we are distracted by the busyness of our lives that we have allowed to accumulate in mountains of minutiae, perhaps to prove how important we are , or to illustrate how good we are at multitasking, or to avoid self reflection.

Christ Jesus calls us to listen, to notice, to pay attention, to focus on the one thing necessary (Lk.10:42). Jesus wants us to listen with the ears of our hearts, to sink below the surface meaning, to take in what it means in our souls. There is no time like the present to listen.