Can you hear me now?

In my last blog, I mentioned that we had recently been abroad on a hugely enjoyable holiday, with 3 generations of our family (I found it rather sobering when I became part of the oldest generation when my mum died last year!)     One of the blessings of our time away was the opportunity to do quite a lot of swimming.  The complex where we were staying had a number of swimming pools.  We also went out on a catamaran one day and had the chance to swim in the sea.

I have to say that I am not a particularly confident swimmer.  I prefer, if possible, not to go out of my depth.  However, when most of our grandchildren were brave enough to venture into the sea, I thought I’d better join them.  I didn’t stray far from the catamaran, and managed to survive the experience (although when one of my grandchildren swam towards me and grabbed hold of my shoulder, I had visions of sinking to the bottom of the ocean!) 

Although I appreciated the many opportunities to swim, one repercussion was that my left ear became blocked.  I was surprised how much this greatly impaired my hearing overall, especially if I was in a group of people, when it was difficult to distinguish conversations going on around me.  I found the experience greatly frustrating, and it has certainly given me more empathy towards those people who have hearing impairment.  To cut a long story short, after I had returned to the UK, I was eventually able to have my ear syringed, which made a dramatic difference.  The nurse informed me that a large amount of wax was removed, but I declined the offer to have a look at it!

As I’ve been pondering on my experience of partial hearing loss, I have been reminded of how we can have problems hearing the voice of God.  Jesus says quite clearly (John 8.47), ‘Whoever belongs to God hears what God says’, yet somehow there seem to be times when we struggle to do so.  The equivalent of wax in one’s ear somehow prevents us from hearing what God is saying.  Perhaps sometimes the problem is not so much that we are not hearing God’s voice, but rather that we are not even listening.  And the reality us that often there are so many ‘voices' and so much noise going on around us that we can fail to distinguish the voice of God.   

A friend told me recently that they were hoping to find somewhere in the country away from the ‘light pollution' of towns and cities, so that they could gaze more effectively on the stars at night.  Some of the sounds and noises which we experience in our daily lives could be called ‘noise pollution’, drowning out what we should be hearing.  I believe that a regular ‘quiet-time’ when we seek to get away from distractions to spend time with and listen to God, still has much to commend it.

 'My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me' (John 10.27)