If you have ever been around preschoolers, then you know that their heads are filled with their own important information that they can’t wait to share. In circle time when you ask a question pertaining to the book you are reading, you may get answers ranging from “it’s my birthday” to “I have blue shoes.” Their ‘listening ears’ are not turned on (even though we pretended to click them on).
For young children, this is developmentally age appropriate and usually adorable. However, for us as adults, we should have this skill fully formed, but isn’t it something we always struggle with? Our heads are loaded with our own important thoughts, problems, or priorities. It’s hard to hear those around us or God leading us. There is always other noise that draws our attention away from Jesus.
As we enter a new season of faith formation together, how can we hear and process how we are being called? How can we guide ourselves or our families into a rhythm of listening? What is one small step we could make? It is incredibly freeing when we don’t have to do all the talking or be right.
Clicking on our “listening ears” to hear messages of understanding, love, trust, direction, and life-giving priorities will lead us to where God is calling us and could even be more exciting than blue shoes or birthdays.
Pastor Lowell prayed this prayer from Walter Brueggemann as part of our weekly staff meeting devotion. It spoke to me. I pray it does the same for you.
Ears but do not hear
“…So we pray for ears,
open, unwaxed, attentive, circumcised.
Call us by name…so that we know,
Call us to you…so that we live,
Call us into the world…so that we care,
Call us to risk…so that we trust beyond ourselves.
You speak/we listen/and comes life,
abundant,
beyond all that we ask or think…
Our ears to hear your word of life.
Amen.”
Learning to listen with you,
Angie Seiller, Director of Faith Formation