Listening to God

From the very beginning, God has desired friendship with us.  He wants to walk with us, talk with us and share the daily events of our lives.  He wants to lead us, guide us, teach us, pour out in us His own wisdom, love, and truth.

What's the problem?  We are busy about many things---there is no time or place to cultivate a friendship; we don't know how to listen, to receive what God wants to give us.  Jesus said, Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone will open to me, I will come in and sup with him and he with me (Rev. 3:20).

We tend to take His words as poetry instead of as reality---He wants to sit at our table and share in our daily bread, the small and large events that make up our lives.  He also wants us to sit at His table and listen to His concerns, His laughter, His life and love, His words. 

So where and how can this beautiful exchange happen?  I learned a long time ago that nothing happens until there is time and space for it to happen.  I always thought I would like to play the piano, but there was no space for a piano in my house and no time to learn to play.  I am now learning to paint, another "wish," but I have not yet found a place to set up a studio space.  Fortunately, I do meet a 3-hour class once a week, and with that time and space carved out, I am finally learning a little and "producing a crop" of canvasses.

Most of us have not found a time and space in our lives to cultivate friendship with God.  I used to think little of my mother's "altar," a small niche in the wall where she kept statues of the saints, a crucifix, and a rosary.  Now I know that she had found a space in her house where God could enter.  When she sat in the lounge chair next to the altar, she could pray. 

For many people, Sunday service is the one time in their lives set aside only for God---not for golf, for preparing dinner, for weeding the garden--only to hear what God might be saying and to "say back" our own thoughts.  The problem, of course, with that time and space is that we are distracted by other people---what they are wearing, what they are doing---as well as by our own preoccupations and lack of belief that God is really present and wanting to talk to us personally.

We don't read Scripture, reflect on it, pray it through at home.  So our spiritual life is not fed on a regular basis.  Our spirits are starving to death, so anemic as to be barely surviving. 

In the Parable of the Sower [Luke 8] , Jesus addressed this human condition with the different types of soil when the Sower went out to his field;  some seed (the Word of God) fell along the path and was trampled on, and the birds ate it up.

Some fell on the rock and had no moisture, so could not grow.  Some fell among thorns and was choked to death.  Only the seed that fell on good soil produced a crop.  Our task is only to prepare the soil---to carve out of our busy lives a time and space where we can meet God and listen to Him.  He will do everything else. 

The Book of James says, Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.  What a comfort!  To know that all we have to do is draw near, that He will meet us on the way and take us home with Him!

God never ceases to amaze me!