Listening With Your Eyes
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him…?” Psalm 8:3-4
This past week I read Mitch Albom’s new book, Have a Little Faith. This book is similar in many ways to his earlier bestseller, Tuesday’s With Morrie. One of the main characters in the new book is Mitch’s childhood rabbi and scattered throughout are brief passages from his rabbi’s sermons. The following one caught my attention.
“A little girl came home from school with a drawing she’d made in class. She danced into the kitchen, where her mother was preparing dinner. ‘Mom, guess what?’ she squealed, waving the drawing. Her mother never looked up. ‘What?’ she said, tending to the pots. ‘Guess what?’ the child repeated, waving the drawing. ‘What?’ said the mother, tending to the plates. ‘Mom, you’re not listening.’ ‘Sweetie, yes I am.’ ‘Mom,’ the child said, ‘you’re not listening with your eyes.’”
I love the idea of listening with your eyes. There is so much God has to say to us in His Creation but a lot of us are not listening, not with our eyes anyway. We tend to think we can only hear with our ears but that is not true. In many instances we will have to use our eyes to hear what God is saying to us.
In viewing the beauty of his handiwork we might hear Him say how much He loves us. In observing some of the devastation caused by our own hands we might hear Him say that we have work to do to restore His Creation. In noticing the incredible detail in tiny flowers or lichens on rocks we may hear God say that He cares about every little detail in our lives. Watching the moon rise we may hear His challenge to let our “lights shine before men.”
Like the little girl’s mother, some of us think we are listening to God when we’re really not. The problem is we’re not listening with our eyes.
–Chuck
(The image above was taken at nearby Jenny Wiley State Park.)