Hearing one another is a gift. Making space to listen, giving another an opportunity to speak while providing ears to receive is affirmation and validation. It’s a way of listening another’s soul into being, a way of prayer.
“Listen to your life,” Frederik Buechner reminds us. “See your life for the fathomless mystery it is.” Rather than endless talking to God, we might do well to quiet ourselves and consider listening to God in all the sounds within and around us. Surely listening to God’s beating heart within our own beating hearts is a form of prayer.
When our grandchildren come to visit, I often tuck them in at night in their beds under the low eave of their upstairs bedroom. I remind them to listen: “Shhh, do you hear the rain splashing on the roof above your heart? Listen! Can you hear the river rushing by outside the window? God gives us rain to make things grow. The river is God’s gift, a place to swim, to fish, to play. Shhh.”
This message is excerpted from “Listening as prayer” by Julie K. Aageson in the July/August 2015 Gather magazine. Today is the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost. Today we commemorate Jan Hus, martyr, 1415.
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