INK ARIA

I'M READY TO LISTEN

Renee Gehman

I’ve been working as a teacher in a child care center, with three-year-olds, and I have found myself amazed at the way distinct personalities shine through at even the earliest stages of life. Every day I witness 11 young, distinct personalities developing, interacting, and causing me to find profundity in the simplest of things.

Teachers are not supposed to show favoritism in the classroom, and I try not to. But one can’t help but feel drawn to certain people, and that is how it is for me with Max. It might be his dimples. It could be his big brown eyes. But I think too that what connects me with Max is an independent and stubborn spirit with which I resonate.

At nap time, Max has two tasks while I rub the backs of his classmates to help them fall asleep: lie on his cot and rest quietly. Instead, he is talking to himself, claiming to need the bathroom, telling me daily in the best scolding parent voice he can muster, "You don’t paint on the walls . . . you don’t paint on the walls . . . ." (He repeats a lot of what he says about seven times before considering it communicated.) Some days, he is stealing away from his cot to wander about; other times he is jumping up and down on top of it.

But the thing that gets me most is when, at my wit’s end, I banish Max and cot to the hallway, where he can’t distract others who are trying to sleep. Because what he’ll inevitably do next is get off his cot, sit at the edge of the doorway, and call out to me, "I’m ready to listen . . . I’m ready to listen . . ." as if this is grounds for revoking his exile.

The fact that he is telling me he’s ready to listen at the very same moment he is doing the only two things he’s not supposed to be doing is half exasperating (he’s missing the point) and half just plain humorous (he is three and adorable).

This scenario led me to wonder if God encounters in me the same issue that I do with Max. Even as I pray and claim to listen for God’s voice, am I not understanding the true essence of listening necessary for an authentic relationship with God?

What does it mean to be ready to listen? I’m not sure exactly, and there are various factors that could be involved. Jews who pray at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem wear prayer shawls and pray out loud. When the verbal prayers around them get too loud and become distracting, they pull their shawls more tightly around their heads, so they can focus more intensely on their own conversation with God.

I love this paradoxical image of covering one’s ears so as to help better hearing, but Max’s issue is not with the distraction of the noise around him. Rather, it is that he does not understand that part of readiness to listen is a posture of obedience.

Samuel was a man who was known for listening to God’s voice, and in fact God and Samuel were in direct communication, even though "in those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions" (1 Sam. 3:1b). God gave Samuel visions. He told him, twice, whom to appoint as king. He was with Samuel always and "let none of his words fall to the ground" (3:19b).

Still, God called Samuel several times before God would say anything more than his name. The first three times Samuel heard the voice, he thought it was Eli. It wasn’t until Samuel, prompted by his priestly mentor, said "Speak Lord, for you servant is listening," that God began to reveal things to Samuel.

Why wouldn’t God clarify things for Samuel and start talking until Samuel used that phrase? Why couldn’t he, when Samuel mistook God’s voice for Eli’s, explain, "No Samuel, it’s me, God. I want to use you as a judge, and as a prophet to Israel, so listen up,"?

As I would not let Max back in the room because he wasn’t really proving his readiness to be obedient, I wonder if God waited to engage in serious communication with Samuel until Samuel showed his true readiness to listen and obey.

I think about the usual nature of my prayers: God, be with this or that person in need. God, give me discernment in this or that relationship and help me to follow your will. God, tell me what I am supposed to do with life. These are good things to pray about, all validated in Jesus’ invitation to bring to him our burdens.

Yet when I wait for answers that don’t seem to come, is that because I’m praying with my own desired answer in mind? What would happen if instead I allowed an earnest desire to obey the voice of God to override my own will?

Max assumed that if he used the correct words he could get what he wanted—reentry to the classroom. I too have asked for things of God, focused mainly on what I or someone close to me could get out of it.

But if the idea of obedience is understood, and prayers come out of the core desire to listen as student to teacher, or child to parent, perhaps then I can say with certainty that yes, I am ready to listen.

—Renee Gehman, Souderton, Pennsylvania, is assistant editor, Dreamseeker Magazine, and an apprentice listener.