Tuning In
A while back, I noticed that my mother was wearing a new wristwatch. Its simple, classic design caught my eye. “I like your watch,” I said. As she held it out for me to examine more closely, she explained that, after her old one gave out and she saw this one on Amazon for less than $30, she decided to get it. “I got my watch on Amazon, too,” I shared, and, as I looked more closely at her watch, I saw how similar they were. Turns out, we had bought the exact same watch. I guess apples really don’t fall very far from their tree.
I like my watch. It does not do anything fancy, but it keeps good time. One of the few analog timepieces in our house, it helps me teach our youngest child how to tell the time on a device that does not display digital numbers. I have a few different colored bands that I slip in and out, depending on what outfit I am wearing, and, as my only watch, I wear it to almost every occasion. The only problem with it is the ticking.
Tick. Tick. Tick. My watch does what most analog timepieces do. Although it does not beep to signal the hour or allow me to set an alarm, the quiet tick, tick, ticking can become overwhelming. Usually, I cannot hear it, or, more accurately, I do not hear it. In a quiet room, if I stop and listen for the ticking, I can usually pick it up—even if the watch is on my dresser several feet away—but, unless I really listen for it, I typically will not notice it. Sometimes, though, even when I do not want to hear it—sitting quietly in prayer, lying in bed trying to fall asleep, or straining to hear a faint sound—the gentle tick of my watch becomes a thunderous distraction. Some nights, Elizabeth will ask me to move my watch out of the bedroom, but other times neither of us even notices that it is there.
I wonder how often God speaks to me but I just don’t hear it because I’m not listening in the right way. Maybe God rarely says anything at all. Maybe God only speaks when God has something important to say. Or maybe God only speaks to people who are important enough or holy enough to receive a divine message. Maybe that’s why great figures like Moses, Elijah, Peter, and Paul were entrusted with God’s holy word while the rest of us depend on them to share it with us.
I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that God rarely speaks or that God only speaks to special people. I believe that God is always communicating God’s love and God’s will to all of us. “The heavens are declaring the glory of God,” the psalmist writes in Psalm 19, “and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” Although the stary sky is more impressive on a clear night far away from light pollution, I do not think that one needs to travel to the middle of nowhere to hear how creation testifies to the grandeur of the Creator. And, lest we think that nature is only a sign of God’s work and not part of God’s active communication, we must remember what the rest of Psalm 19 says: “Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”
My problem—and I bet some of you share this problem—is one of tuning in. Like carefully turning the dial on an AM radio to better pick up the crackle-filled sound of music being carried silently across the hills on radio waves, we must tune our whole selves—hearts and minds and bodies and spirits—to receive what God is communicating to us. Certain special equipment—the equivalent of a large or amplified antenna—might help, but what we really need to hear God’s voice is already within us and all around us.
Regular participation in worship shapes us in ways that prepare us to receive God. Receiving Holy Communion realigns our wills with God’s will, resynching our receptivity to the frequencies or amplitudes through which God speaks to us. Hearing, reading, and studying God’s ancient word opens up space within us to notice what God is saying today. Long, intentional periods of silence begin to push aside the noise, clutter, and distractions from our lives so that we might hear God more clearly and frequently. Writing in a journal sharpens our ability to interpret what God is saying. Sharing spiritual conversation with others is a way to practice the art of holy listening. Sometimes fasting or going on retreat or making a sacramental confession helps. The ways that we can make ourselves available to God are limitless, but we must be the ones to take them.
Occasionally, God reaches out and speaks to us when we are not ready. Sometimes, we recognize God’s voice even when we are not looking or listening for it. Those rare moments lead us to believe that the long periods of silence that we experience must be because God has nothing to say. Although we do sometimes journey through dark, dry periods when no spiritual practices can help us hear or feel God, usually, when God’s voice goes silent in my life, it is because I have forgotten how to listen. Like a quiet ticking or a still, small whisper, that voice is there, but I need to quieten my own voice and silence the noise all around me in order to recognize it.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan