Speak for your Servant is Listening

Speak for your Servant is Listening

This is a quote from the text on which I am preaching Sunday. 1 Samual 3: 1-20.

It is always interesting to me (actually more than interesting - awesome) the serendipity of timing. Tomorrow I will be leading a workshop on listening. I planned for this two months ago and did not know that Sunday I was also preaching a sermon on how we are called to listen for God.

So, my week is a week of pondering the whole understanding that listening is a key to everything. It is certainly the key to relationships. I keep learning that most of us are hungry to be listened to. I know I am. At the same time I am always on the alert for the fact that most people do not really listen. One of the quotes from the workshop tomorrow is
"Listening si so basic that we take it for granted. Unfortunately most of us think of ourselves as better listeners than we really are."

It is very hard not to be listened to in those relationships that we count on for understanding. When we are not listened to - we get shut up in the solitude of our own hearts and in the sometimes craziness of our own minds.

What I know is that so many people are lonely - and we are lonely in the midst of living with lots of people. The loneliness comes because we so often do not feel heard by another person.

I feel blessed because I have a spiritual director, friends, daughters and two groups that serve to be places where I can be heard and known. And I know that many people do not have any of these.

And then there is my relationship with God. But I also know that I have the potential to live compulsively so that I think I am listening, but I am actually too distracted and supposedly busy - to really listen for God's voice or look for God's presence.

So, as I start to write this sermon I recognize that it is very easy to SAY - speak, for your servant is listening. It is a lot harder to do it.