Stay Tuned!

Daily Reading:  Job 36-37

Keep listening to the thunder of his voice and the rumbling that comes from his mouth. (Job 37.2)

Devotional Thought: Have you ever been talking with someone and then suddenly realized that you hadn't heard a word they said for the last few seconds (or minutes!)?  My wife is adept at catching me in just that condition!  She can tell when I'm trying to cover it, too.  Typically we listen well at the beginning of a conversation, but our attention wanes as the words accumulate.  (My congregation needs me to remember that!)  It's just human nature.

But human nature must not override the needs of the spirit.

When the children of Israel were encamped before Mt. Sinai, they saw flashes of lightning and heard crashes of thunder.  There, God gave them his word.  The problem with the Israelites, however, was not that they hadn't heard God's thunder.  It was that they forgot what he had to say.  In his speech to Job, Elihu reminded him and us that we need to "Keep listening to ... his voice."

Sometimes getting a partial message is even worse than getting no message at all.  Imagine a lover reading a letter... "I want you to know that I don't love you..." and just as she turned the page, the letter was torn from her hands.  She would be pretty upset, right?  But, if only she had read the rest of the sentence... "with just a part of my heart, but with my whole heart!" 

Just as the Apostle Paul "did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20.27), so too, I must keep on listening to God through all my life.  Tuning him out could turn out to be the worst mistake of all!

Prayer: Lord, you are so gracious to speak to me.  Help me, I pray, to keep on listening to you - all through my days, all through my specific situations, and all through my life.  Amen.

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 124.6-8

6 Blessed be the LORD, who has not given us as prey to their teeth!

7 We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped!

8 Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.