Sunday afternoon we took a little hike behind my brother’s house in Flat Rock, Alabama.  About a half a mile of walking brought us to this small waterfall; this has been a special place to me most of my life.  It was to this spot as a child I use to come and just sit for hours at a time; pondering my problems and looking for meaning in my life.  Many times when life seemed particularly stressful or there was a difficult decision to make I would somehow find myself in this place; afterwards my burden always seemed lighter.

        I know that there was no magic in this place and simply being here did not cause my problems to vanish; but I do know that time spent in silence listening to the roar of this waterfall granted me time and space to hear the still small voice speaking to my heart.  It taught me that prayer is more than words and that it involves listening, seeing and feeling.  This is something I needed reminding of because so often I stay too busy to listen, too busy to see and even too busy to feel.

        I am reminded of my grandmother, Margaret Smith.  She was blind all her life; never once did she see the sun set, but she had a way of helping you appreciate the beauty she would never see.  She was not handicapped by sight and taught me the importance of listening.  She could play any musical instrument she chose, you could not hide from her (and I tried), she always knew when I was being less than honest and she could identify you simply by the sound of your footsteps.  How?  She aggressively listened what was around her and the people around her.

        Today we are too busy to listen when someone needs to talk.  We have forgotten that the first duty of love is to listen.  There are people all around us who desperately need someone to care enough to listen to them.  A friend is a person who listens attentively while you say nothing.  Let us remember that listening is a choice and we can win more friends with our ears than with our mouth.

Something to think about:

• There is a grace of kind listening, as well as a grace of kind speaking… Kindness is a language the dumb can speak, the deaf can hear, and the blind can see.

• If you have never heard the mountains singing, or seen the trees of the field clapping their hands, do not think because of that they don’t. Ask the Master to open your ears so you may hear it and your eyes so you may see it, because, though few men ever know it, they do, my friend, they do.

• The start of wisdom is silence—the second step is listening.

• The one who listens is the one who understands.

• A person who has a lot of friends either has a lot of money or is a good listener.

• Sometimes the greatest sermon is silence. A suffering person doesn’t need a lecture, he needs a listener.

• If you think you know it all, you haven’t been listening.

Can you hear me now?
Rickey Moore