Five Days of Sensing God: A 5-Day Reading Plan by Mandy SmithSample

Day Four: Knowing God Through Our Sense of Hearing

Scripture: 1 Kings 19:1-18

Teachers know something that feels counter-intuitive to the rest of us—one of the best ways to get the attention of noisy children is to speak really quietly. Their natural curiosity makes them quiet enough to listen. I think God knows this too.

Of course, we have many examples in scripture of God’s dramatic appearances—thunder claps and voices from heaven are part of God’s repertoire. But we also have stories of God whispering. 

In a place of deep despair, fleeing for his life into the wilderness, Elijah lies down and asks to die. He sees no way forward. But God knows the story is not yet over, there is hope and life ahead so he tells Elijah, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” I wonder if Elijah was surprised that it unfolded like this:

“Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.” (1 Kings 19:11-13)

What if God’s glory and beauty is resounding all around us all day, every day? But we’re simply too preoccupied to pay attention?

Take note of the sound-related words in this invitation from Thomas Merton:

“What is serious to [humans] is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as ‘play’ is perhaps what he Himself takes most seriously. At any rate, the Lord plays and diverts Himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance. . . .For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things; or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not. Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.” (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation)

What if the ordinary soundtrack of our days—the sleeping snuffles of our children, the happy purr of a cat, the rustle of a curtain, the cry of a crow—is an invitation to join God, like the sound of music seeping in from the next room, calling us to pay attention, to join God’s dance of making the world new?

Respond:

Take a moment to sit in silence, slow your breathing and your movement and direct your attention to what your ears take in. What ordinary sounds do you notice which have been there all along? Pay attention. Can you hear the sound of your own breath? The creaking of your chair? The birds outside? The people moving around in other parts of the building? How does being present in this way affect your perspective on your life? On God? How can you make time to listen like this more often?