With our most recent road trip only days behind me I stopped to consider this morning what really made it special and different from past trips.
It was the conversation.
Dave and I have traveled probably traveled hundreds of thousands of miles on the highways of the western United States in the past 25 years and this is the first one that was really filled with conversation.
Now don’t get me wrong, we spent other trips talking but it was generally about the work we had ahead of us. Making final mental notes of the preparations that needed to be completed, tweeking the last minute details of a trade show or streamlining the daily operations of our jobs was the general topic.
Take those moments and interject computer work, goggle searches for extra information, talk radio or the latest country hits and our time was gobbled up minute by minute without really listening to each other’s hearts.
This trip was 25 hours of enjoying each other’s company!
Have you noticed how text messages and twitter have reduced our conversations to brief snippets and how our cell phone conversations are disjointed and distracted? Does it bother you that we don’t just sit and talk?
So often phone conversations are one sided; I have to hurry and tell you all about me and when you start to talk about you, I get busy on my end doing dishes or folding laundry and I barely listen.
Important stuff like news stories have been reduced to snippets because the viewing public have shortened their attention spans and if you don’t catch my interest immediately I’m off to another channel. So everything appears to be a crisis or a breaking story.
Very few take time to show sincere interest.
The sad thing is I find that happens more often than I like to admit in my relationship with the Lord. The saying “quality not quantity” leaves us making excuses for our actions. But what’s wrong with quality and quantity. Spending time, our only unrenewable resource with those we love especially, our Heavenly Father, should be first and foremost in our actions.
“You can be sure that anyone who serves the Lord faithfully is special to him.
The Lord listens when I pray to him.” Psalm 4:3 ERV
“The Father gives me my people. Every one of them will come to me. I will always accept them. ” John 6:37 ERV
Our heavenly Father has set an open-door, open-heart acceptance policy for us to follow. He listens when we talk with Him and He accepts us into His presence.
Should we do any less with those that we love?
Write a letter, leave a card, put a note in a lunch bag, sit down and focus when carrying on a phone conversation, turn the TV and other electronic devices off during meals and just visit. There’s a true expression of love in being listened too. There is a difference, a big difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is the comprehension of sound but listening is understanding the heart.
The Father always listens – He waits for each word and His desire is that we take time to listen to Him as well. Jesus related this instruction to John in Revelation about Christians and lukewarm relationship.
“Listen! I am standing and knocking at your door. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and we will eat together.” Revelation 3:20 CEV
Jesus is waiting to sit down and visit with you today. Do you have the time?
