listening

"What's this?" she asked. "A photographic memory?"

I couldn't quite see what she was on about, so I asked her to explain.

"You remember all the details," she responded. I was seeing this person in regard to a service of thanksgiving that's coming up. She'd been chatting about the family - the names of the children, the fact that her mother and father had both changed their names, the choice of the praise that they wanted: all those sorts of things.

"You must have a photographic memory to remember all that," she declared, when I referred back a little bit later to what she'd been saying.

"No," I replied. "I'm just careful to listen."

Listening is an important part of all our lives. Being aware of the detail which matters to people we're with. It's often the detail which counts so much.

You remember that great Buddy Holly song? Well, maybe you don't! But I was a great Buddy Holly fan and loved the way he used to sing: and especially the song 'Rave on'. It starts with the rather telling words -

Little things you say and do make me want to be with you ...

Do you see that? It's the little things which matter. The detail.

We sometimes say the devil's in the detail. But in truth, the Lord is right into the detail as well.

Why do you think there are all of those lists of people with odd sounding names? Huge long lists of names, which, when you're reading the Scriptures, you really just want to skip over. Why are they there? Why such attention to detail?

Because what may seem a little and insignificant thing to you and me, matters a lot to the Lord. He doesn't miss a thing. None of us is too small, too weak, too odd, for him to care about.

He knows, and cares about, every smallest detail of our lives.

Isn't that what Jesus meant when he said that even the very hairs of your head are all numbered? The Lord knows us, down to the smallest detail. He doesn't miss a thing.

And one simple way of letting folk know that's the case is by listening with great care to what's being said.

Half of the time in our varied conversations, we're either speaking ourselves or thinking of what we'll say next. Listening sometimes doesn't rate that highly in our conversation skills.

But the Lord is great at listening. He hangs on our every word. He hears the smallest little pin drop in our lives. Because he cares, because he loves us more than we could ever guess.

How do I get that across to folk if not at least by listening that attentively myself?

The little things are always what mean just so much to people that we meet.

Most folk think that preachers spend their time in always speaking. Not so.

Most of the time it's listening that we do.