May 22
Background Noise
In the distance, a siren sounds as an ambulance races against time. The base notes from the neighbor’s stereo thunder through the wall and shake the knick knacks on the curio shelf. Your children slam the front door and run through the hall as the television is showing the first of fifteen consecutive commercial messages.
Have you considered how noisy life is?
Yesterday I was sitting at my travel agent’s desk as she checked the lowest rates for a trip I’m planning to make. As she stared at the computer screen, I kept hearing an intermittent loud buzz. “What is that noise,” I asked. “Oh that,” she said, “that’s the signal that someone just walked in the door. After a while you get used to it—I don’t even hear it anymore.”
Is it possible to hear something so often that you don’t hear it anymore?
I was day dreaming with a friend the other day about getting out of our Condo and buying a house near the church. He said, “I’d never live down there; its too close to the train tracks, I wouldn’t want to hear the trains all night.” “What trains?” I asked. “I never hear a train while I’m at work.”
The next day I heard the train go by several times. I guess I’d become so accustomed to hearing it that I didn’t even hear it anymore.
How can God get our attention when the volume of life is turned up so loud that we no longer hear anything? Whenever Jesus had an important decision to make, he left the crowd and got off to Himself and prayed. In solitude, He connected with His Father and found guidance to make the tough decisions.
Maybe the trick to hearing God is to go where you can’t hear anything else.
Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).
Background Noise
In the distance, a siren sounds as an ambulance races against time. The base notes from the neighbor’s stereo thunder through the wall and shake the knick knacks on the curio shelf. Your children slam the front door and run through the hall as the television is showing the first of fifteen consecutive commercial messages.
Have you considered how noisy life is?
Yesterday I was sitting at my travel agent’s desk as she checked the lowest rates for a trip I’m planning to make. As she stared at the computer screen, I kept hearing an intermittent loud buzz. “What is that noise,” I asked. “Oh that,” she said, “that’s the signal that someone just walked in the door. After a while you get used to it—I don’t even hear it anymore.”
Is it possible to hear something so often that you don’t hear it anymore?
I was day dreaming with a friend the other day about getting out of our Condo and buying a house near the church. He said, “I’d never live down there; its too close to the train tracks, I wouldn’t want to hear the trains all night.” “What trains?” I asked. “I never hear a train while I’m at work.”
The next day I heard the train go by several times. I guess I’d become so accustomed to hearing it that I didn’t even hear it anymore.
How can God get our attention when the volume of life is turned up so loud that we no longer hear anything? Whenever Jesus had an important decision to make, he left the crowd and got off to Himself and prayed. In solitude, He connected with His Father and found guidance to make the tough decisions.
Maybe the trick to hearing God is to go where you can’t hear anything else.
Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).
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