Hello? Hello? Is anybody out there?

As a wee child, I had the reputation in my family as being something of a chatterbox. Apparently, I just talked, and talked, and talked. Hard to imagine for you all, I'm sure. But all this chatter wears on a mother's ears and most days my mother would smile and nod and have no earthly idea what was coming out of my mouth. Every so often though, I would get that sense that all my babbling was being ignored, and I would ask my mother: "Are you listening to me?"

Being the wonderful mother that she is and not wishing to lie to her daughter, she always replied with: "No, I'm not." I would then continue to talk as if the exchange had never occured.



I just wanted to talk. I was curious if mother was listening to me, but I did not really care if she was or was not.



So often I catch myself asking people questions and not listening to the answers, or finishing a conversation and realizing just how much I talked.



So often it seems that we care more about the quantity of our words than their quality, or we're just throwing out empty words to avoid silence.

And, even more often, we care more about what can we say instead of what someone else could share. You know those people - the ones that have their next sentence/story/response ready while you're still trying to speak.



This summer in my Bible readings I noticed so many writers calling out to God: "Are you listening? Do you hear me?"

We want to be heard, to know that our pains, struggles, joys, and triumphs are being acknowledged.

It seems to me that we talk about talking quite a bit. But, how often to we talk about listening?



My question is this -

in all the jumble, are we listening?

Or do we hear words and never take them in?

Are we listening for God or are we just yelling at him to listen to us?

Are we straining our ears to really listen to people?

my young self didn't care about being listened to - I was all about the sheer quantity of things to say, but in all my talking, I was never listening. I was not even hearing anything around me. Maybe it's time instead of barking at God to listen to us, we take a moment to try and even hear Him.