Saturday, May 12, 2012

Learning to Listen

Today is May 12, 2012.  It has been over a year since I have really written anything.  Over a year since I turned off my facebook account.  Over a year since my mother in law died. A year of radio silence, facebook silence, blog silence.

Yet my hands so often reach for and pick up the laptop, logging in yet again to email, hungry for something I cannot find.  My fingers still so often enter in my credit card number again to get that thing, whatever it is, trying yet a different angle to scratch an itch I cannot ever seem to really pinpoint, always just beyond my fingertips.  I go to the fridge and rifle through it for something that I never seem to really find, shovel in another fistful of something salty or sweet, in reality trying to fill the bottomless, yawning cavern in my soul with a tiny toy plastic spade. 

It has been over a year since my friend Salli sent me a link to the blog of a woman whose writing has changed my life.  Over a year since I bought the book and began to read its life-changing message of learning and keeping the practice of counting the gifts, the abundant grace gifts all around.  Asking God to open my eyes and my heart to his unending mercy and grace gifts all around.  Even when my heart feels dead within my and my dry, thirsty soul reaches for things that will not satisfy.  When my hands again pick up my phone and send out random texts to good friends about trivial things, but really asking, “Am I ok?”  “Are you there or am I really alone?”.  No matter the trivial subject, is that not often the real message?  “Do I matter?”  “Do I count?”  Am I seen?”

Over a year of trying to pull away, and only just now am I really turning in, trying to learn to listen to the Spirit of God.  Yes, I am just now, just really now am I taking a pen and paper and sitting in silence.  I am only a few days into this practice of listening.  And you know what?  After a year of striving to create a vacuum into which He can speak, I am only just now turning in and finally, well, finally…

…listening.

Ah-ha.

And you know what.  If I sit still and bow low and quiet my heart, He speaks.  His word rises up in my heart.  Still and quiet a book, chapter and even verse number will come to my mind, I turn to it and my breath catches in my chest. 

He is speaking to me

The God of the Universe, through the quiet whisper of the Helper promised by the truest Revelation of Himself, the Son, speaks to me

Whoa.

I am undone. 

That first morning I sit in the big blue chair under the lamp my bother gave me for Christmas, its soft yellow light spilling over my white cotton gown, an oasis of light in the still darkened house. 

Do not be deceived, I have nearly lost the discipline of daily rising before my wee ones.  By some miracle, I stumbled down the hall and into His grace.

He was waiting for me.

I shyly pile around me my bible, journal, and a new little devotion book.  It is almost awkward.  Like being naked for the first time in front of James.

Spiritually I disrobe, and stand before him.  I am starving in the one way I need most to be filled.

I turn my heart to the God of the Universe, and ask for him to speak.  I sit.  I wait.

His whispers to me begin with the phrase, “Arise my love, my Fair one, the winter is gone a new season is here…”  My heart quickens within me.  I jot it into my journal, first contact! 




“I know this!”, I think, “I know this!  This is scripture.  This is His word – now where was that?”  My hands instantly reach for my laptop, just a few inches away, instantly seeking to utilize the world wide web of information at my fingertips, a god to which I constantly appeal through the séance of google – desiring what Eve first lusted after when she sold us all out: knowledge. 

Perhaps it is called the web because it is a trap into which I am so often entangled. 

I often pluck this fruit and sink my teeth into the juicy stuff it offers, and sell my own soul for trifles of useless knowledge, mere morsels of tantalizing entertainment and before I know it I have wasted hours of my precious resource: time. 

He whispers again, “Be still.  Listen.  Do not seek it, let me give it to you.” 

I pull back my hand, not wanting to rip into this gift before it is given.  This is something new, this waiting for it to be given. 

“Psalm 72”, whispers the King to my heart.

I read it.  I sit.  Nothing jumps out.  I wait.  My eyes linger on the print on the page.  Words that stand forever, printed on fragile onion skin that will one day crumble into dust.  Then I see at the top, “A Psalm of Solomon.”  My spirit quickens within me. 

And again, that quiet voice, “Song of Solomon, Chapter 3.”

I flip to it, my heart beating a little faster.  I read it.  It is juicy. 



“Are you gonna get up and look for me?  Go out and seek me?  Reach first for me?  How bad do you want me?”

My appetite is stirred.  I want more.  I want to seek him, I want to listen – to really hear him, and to respond to him in ways I never have before.  I want to find him, and cling to him, and not let go of him until I am satisfied.  Oh yeah, I am all in, more than I have been in a long time.  I linger over the passage, finally stilled.  Striving ceases.  I do not need more information, I need more silence, I need to wait until what I really need is given.  Even the waiting can be a gift.  I need the stillness in my whirling world.  He knows this, this lover of my soul.  I wait with great anticipation. 

 My eyes fall on the words just above chapter 3 on the very to which page he led me so gently.

They leap out and call to me, an aria of invitation welling up and bursting forth with tenor joy:

“My lover said to me, ‘Rise up, my beloved, my fair one, and come away.  For the winter is past, and the rain is over and gone.  The flowers are springing up, and the time of singing birds has come, even the cooing of turtledoves.  The fig trees are budding, and the grapevines are in blossom.  How delicious they smell!  Yes, spring is here!  Arise, my beloved, my fair one, and come away!’”  
(Song of Songs 2: 10-13 NLT)

Puccini sung by Pavarotti on his best day ain't got nothing on my lover Jesus.  His voice cascades over my thirsty soul like living water from an eternal spring, cool, refreshing, and everything I have been seeking, longing for, that itch that I cannot seem to scratch that is always out of reach, no longer tormenting, that hunger so deep and elusive, satisfied.  

He has been waiting for me.  And finally I hear, turn, and respond.  

Whoa.

I got bumps on my goose.

He is speaking to me.  He is speaking to me.

The God of the Universe, through the quiet whisper of the Helper promised by the truest Revelation of Himself, the Sonspeaks to me.

After over a year of silence, he is speaking to me.

The winter is past, the rain is over and gone…