I have a
long front porch that faces Bayou Castille.
It is an amazing place. You can
come up the steps, walk the length, enter my house and think you’ve passed a
totally still and quiet place, where nothing at all is going on. From the quick, initial appearance, that’s
true. But the reality is something quite different. It is only when you are willing to give your
time and yourself to the bayou that she will open herself up to you and give to
you.
When you sit
still and quiet before her looking, day after day, you learn exactly what her
trees, far and near, look like. Then,
and only then, will your eyes quickly detect when something is different:
there’s an Osprey in a Cyprus across the bayou, a Blue Heron stands perfectly
still in the water waiting for breakfast to swim near, a limb blew off in last
night’s rainstorm, the King birds are back nesting at the water’s edge, a gator
glides silently by.
When you sit
still and quiet before her listening, day after day, you begin to know her
symphony of sounds: the rustle of tiny birds flitting about in the underbrush,
the gentle plop……plop…..plop of a squirrel discarding the unwanted parts of his
pine cone, the frantic scratches of a game of squirrel chase, the movement in
the pathways of the trees that the animals regularly use, each bird’s unique
song and alarm sound, frogs calling to each other, mullet splashes, two owls
hooting back and forth at sunset.
Just as I
thought the bayou was silent, you can believe God is silent unless you
purposefully pursue Him. To begin to
hear God you must sit still and quiet before Him, where He is your sole
focus. Read His Word so you get to know
what He looks like, what He sounds like.
Talk to Him. Listen to Him. Breathe Him.
The bayou
was always making noise. It was my
inattention that let me miss it. God is
always speaking to you. Not purposefully
pursuing Him and His Word will let you miss it.
Just like it took time for me to know my bayou, it takes time to begin
to hear with your heart the voice of God.
And, just like the bayou came alive when I gave myself to it, God will
come alive to you when you give of yourself to Him.
I want to
challenge you to make time each day where God is your sole focus. When you are willing to come before the Lord,
giving your time and yourself to Him, He will reveal Himself to you in
personal, intimate ways.
He is
speaking. Sh-h-h-h-h. Do you hear Him?
