There is nothing so heart-wrenching as the cry of someone in pain, “nobody listens.” God has placed in each of us a need to be heard, a passion to communicate. Ultimately, this need is a call to Him.
There is nothing more powerful and affirming than a desperate call to God in a time of need that is promptly and, without a chance of coincidence, responded to. Nothing is more assuring than the confirmation that the God of the Universe cares enough to listen to our pitiful, tiny cries and to take time to respond.
I have witnessed the power of listening in my decades of work with Kairos Prison Ministry. Our slogan is “Listen, Listen, Love, Love,” I have seen numerous times the power of a willingness to listen to someone whose voice is almost never heard and to respond without judgment but with love. Such listening is not an agreement in the correctness of what another thinks or has done. It is, however, an affirmation of the worth of the speaker.
There is a grotesque lack of listening in our world right now. I know it’s a political season and that non-listening is exaggerated in such times. It just seems our inability to listen to each other has ballooned in recent years. We are not called to abandon our belief or justify value systems which defy the sovereignty of God and the worthiness of man. We are called to love and to affirm the value of each person no matter how far in left field we believe them to be. God loves and listens to them. Can we do any less?
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