Listening to God

The second chapter of Barbara Brown Taylor’s “When God is Silent” says this:

“Even now, some Christians have trouble listening to God. Many of us prefer to speak. Our corporate prayers are punctuated with phrases such as “Hear us, Lord” or “Lord, hear our prayer,” as if the burden to listen were on God and not us. We name our concerns, giving God suggestions on what to do about them. What reversal of power might occur if we turned the process around, naming our concerns and asking God to tell us what to do about them? “Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.”

Yes, indeed, how we need to listen to and for God. We are good at making noise. We need to learn to listen. It seems as though that should be so easy, and yet it just does not seem to work out like that. Let us try to listen more!