Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, "Prove that you are a good person." Another voice says, "You'd better be ashamed of yourself." There also is a voice that says, "Nobody really cares about you," and one that says, "Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful." But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, "You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you." That's the voice we need most of all to hear. To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen.
That's what prayer is. It is listening to the voice that calls us "my Beloved."
From Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey.
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2 comments:
asher, i also read this this morning when it arrived in my inbox. it helped. it is where i am, trying to wait, to not move, but to listen for that voice. to listen. it is very difficult.
Yeah, the daily meditation emails from henrinouwen.org seem to be well timed. I agree, to listen for that voice is difficult. It seems it's not necessarily difficult to hear it when I am listening, but strip all else away and come to my end where I can hear that voice is hard. It's hard to resist the temptation to just listen to the other voices, many of them not bad, just noise.
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