The Realm of the Verbal Processor

Hearing Through the Noise of Life

Yesterday I took my daughter Laurel to a couple of easter egg hunts. The second hunt was at a very large church here in Orlando. Part of the free “festivities” at this church was a climbing wall. As soon as Laurel saw it, she wanted to do it…so… off to the climbing wall.As I am watching some of the other kids climbing, I’m noticing that as they get higher up the wall, several of them were shifting to the left of the straight up path. As they kept going on that route, when they got closer to the top, the cable they were attached to would actually pull them off the wall…because they were three-four feet off center of where the cable mechanism is attached at the top. So, I told Laurel to just go straight up and not slide to the side.

So as she is climbing up, I’m noticing her moving to the left. I gave her a bit of time to see if she would self correct. When she didn’t I called out her name. She immediately started looking around until we made eye contact. I told her to move to the right, and she saw what was going on and got back on track.

So…what difference does this make? Why am I writing about it? Because a spiritual truth struck me as soon as she started looking for me.

There was a large crowd around the climbing wall. Very large crowd. There was a lot of noise. There was a Christian band playing in the background. Lots of distracting things…not to mention the focus of a seven year old who is hanging on for dear life fifteen feet off the ground. But when she heard my voice…her father’s voice…she immediately started looking for me to find out what I had to say. And when she heard me, she remembered what I told her before she started, corrected and got back on track.

We live in a noisy society that is full of distractions. There are so many things that want to pull us away from the path that God has mapped out for us. He has uniquely created each of us with certain gifts and strengths. He has given us a path to follow…if we will only follow it. There are even things that look good…like the other handholds that the kids were following off track…but they aren’t the best things. For that matter, sometimes the best thing for us is more difficult than what we would like…and we reach for a handhold that is off track…never realizing that we just settled for second (or third or tenth) best.

The key for us is to be able to decipher our Father’s voice in the midst of life. We need to be listening to God as we read the Bible. Then when we get in the midst of our day, we need to listen for His voice guiding us back where we need to be.

April 8, 2007 - Posted by Jarvis | devotional, Jesus, kids, life | devotional