Yesterday my nephew, who's four, was here for a quick visit. Oakley loves trains. And by that I mean he LOVES trains with the fire of a thousand burning suns.
Anyway, we were walking up to an electronics store, where his dad was looking for a gift for his mom, "from the kids". As I was opening the door to let Oakley in, he turned suddenly to look at me with wide eyes. "I hear a twain!" he exclaimed.
I listened, and he was right. There was a train whistle blowing. But if he hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have noticed. If I had continued into the store and you had asked me, "Was there a train whistle blowing outside?" I'd have said no. With confidence, no less. And I'd have been sure I was right. I didn't hear it because I wasn't listening for it. It's not that I don't like trains. They're fine. But Oakley? That boy lives and breathes trains. His love of them causes him to be forever tuned in. He is always, under the surface, listening for trains. And so he hears them.
I can't shake the memory of the excitement on Oakley's little face, and how I felt when I realized that I was totally missing what was so important to him. I can't shake it because of the spiritual lesson it reminds me of. We hear what we're listening for. We see what we're watching for.
God isn't hiding. He isn't hard at work in exotic mission fields only. His visions and dreams aren't blocked from the Western world by some sort of high-energy microwaves. What blocks him out is us. Someone says God spoke to them in a dream and we pass it off as indigestion. We're not looking. We're not listening. We're walking through life, spiritually blindfolded with spiritual earplugs firmly in place.
We have forgotten silence. It makes us nervous; and no wonder. It is in the silence that the Spirit can speak to us. He comes in the still, small voice, remember? We fear what He has to say to us. Will He insist that we surrender something? Will he press us to do something that frightens us? Will He poke and prod at a wound long covered, long ago sustained, but never healed? And so we drown out the silence.
We scorn stillness. We call it laziness. And worse than that, we ignore the entreaties of our God to be still, and we say instead that Good Christians work for the Lord. Never mind that the Lord asks us to come away; to walk away from all the bustling and be alone with Him. Never mind that this is the pattern set for us by God's own Son. We decide for him that God understands. That family needs me to bring them a casserole. My kid's science fair project is due tomorrow. My house hasn't been dusted for weeks and the in-laws will be here soon. I have to bring snacks for the Bible study. We leave no time to be still. We make excuses and we stay busy and we un-learn how to do it, so that even if we give it a half-hearted attempt, we fail. We fidget. We check our email. We look at our watches. We make mental lists of things we need to accomplish. We've forgotten the skill of stillness.
And all of this points to the same problem. We are too busy being good for God to be with God. We are too busy serving to be still. And at the heart of it, hidden deep down beneath layers of spiritualization and justification to protect us from the sinfulness, is fear.
We fear that what we will hear, what God will tell us or ask of us, will be too much. Too hard. Too scary. Too impractical. Too radical. We fear the opinions of those around us. Our family. Our friends. Our churches. We have decided that refusing to hear is less sinful than refusing to obey.
We know how the world perceives radicals. It's not positive. We don't want that. We want, instead, the clean, sanitary, bright-and-shiny GOODness, and not the unknown of GODliness.
We don't hear the train whistle because we're not listening for it.
We don't hear God's voice because we've made a concerted effort to drown it out.
But God isn't asking us to be good. He is asking us to be Godly. To face down our fears and trust him enough to look foolish. Trust him enough to seem irresponsible. Trust him enough to let others- even others in the Church- call us radical.
We resist. We do life half-heartedly, and because of that we become overwhelmed with all the things that pull at us. We try to get by on spiritual junk food, and then are mystified when we have no spiritual energy. What God calls us to do is not possible without his power. And we cannot tap into that power if we're not listening and obeying.
God will not empower us to do busywork in order to ignore His true calling in our lives.
We're doing it wrong, Church. We're doing it half-way, and half-way doesn't cut it. The whole world is watching. They're watching us do it wrong and label it "GOD" and suffer through life. Why on earth would that draw them in?!? This should not be. Because it's not just yourself that you're making miserable. It's ruining your reflection of God, too.
All or nothing.
Embrace the unknown.
Listen for the train.
