Silent

In the Disney Pixar movie Wall-E, humans live on a ship in outer space. They grow fatter and fatter as they zip around in their motorized chairs. They communicate with others via a screen suspended in front of their faces. When one human's screen is temporarily shut down, she finds to her surprise that she is seated by a huge swimming pool.

She did not know the ship had a swimming pool because she had never noticed it before.

"We cover our ears with Walkman headphones to drown out 'noise pollution'," writes Uta Hagen in A Challenge for the Actor, "when actually we are blocking out thoughts and suspending all imagination."

God desires to meet with us and communicate to us. We, however, drown Him out with our "noise". We focus on ourselves and our busy-ness, our goals and our desires. We have no time for either God or anyone else.

Just as we forget how to listen to others, so we forget how to listen to God. We do not hear Him speak, because we are making too much noise to hear His "gentle whisper" (1 Kings 19:11-12).

We must learn how to listen.

We must learn how to be silent.