The Sauntering Pilgrim

I’ve often wanted to have a conversation with my twenty-something-year-old self, to share some wisdom from this end of my lifespan and to offer guidance to make his life not necessarily easier but more fulfilling. Some things I’d share, my younger self could never imagine. So I wonder about the wisdom I cannot imagine today but may grow to know some day. How good it would be if I had a teacher I could trust to give me dependable guidance today.

Of course, there have been many teachers and guides through history, prophets who, as the scripture says, have spoken “in many and various ways” (Heb. 1:1). What’s lacking is not the teacher nor the instructions; it’s the listening. “Morning by morning,” Isaiah wrote, “[God] wakens me and opens my understanding to his will. The Sovereign Lord has spoken to me, and I have listened” (Isa. 50:4f NLT). How can we claim Isaiah’s words as our own and listen, really listen, to God’s instructions and faithfully put them into practice? With apologies to David Letterman and his “Top Ten List,” here’s my Top Eight List of ways to hear God.

Number eight – embrace silence. “Never miss a good chance to shut up,” Will Rogers said. When Elijah was at his lowest, he heard God in “a sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:11f). “Be still, and know that I am God!” the psalmist wrote (Ps. 46:10). God is known best in silence. When our wandering, restless mind grows still and our heart’s passions settle into silence, a deeper dimension of life is revealed: the ground “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts17:28). If you want to hear God, embrace silence.

Number seven – spend much time in nature. Thoreau went to the woods, he wrote, “because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived,” and John Muir went to lose his mind and find his soul. God speaks in nature. We hear the invitation from Job, “Ask the animals, and they will teach you. Ask the birds of the sky, and they will tell you. Speak to the earth, and it will instruct you. Let the fish of the sea speak to you” (Job 12:7-8 NLT). If you want to hear God, spend much time in nature.

Number six – pay attention to your conscience. When Jeremiah envisioned the new covenant God would make with Israel, he knew it would be unlike the first covenant, engraved in stone, immutable, unbending, unchanging. Instead, the new covenant would be written on the human heart, as much a part of who you are as your DNA. “The ladder of the Kingdom is within you,” Isaac the Syrian wrote, “hidden in your own soul.” If you want to hear God, pay close attention to your conscience.

Number five – pay attention to the set of the sails. No sailor can make the wind blow or choose its direction, but a good sailor will set the sails to catch the wind when it does blow. None of us can choose the time or manner in which God speaks to us, but we can prepare ourselves to be in the best position to hear God’s voice when it speaks. Practice the disciplines of corporate worship, a personal devotional life, acts of kindness to others, and doing justice in the public arena. If you want to hear God, pay attention to the set of your sails. 

Number four – ask. “Ask, and it will be given you,” Jesus said; “search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you” (Matt. 7:7-8). Remember the parable of the widow who kept knocking at the judge’s door demanding justice until the judge finally relented and gave her what she asked for (Luke 18:1-8). If you want to hear God, ask and keep asking, knocking on God’s door till your knuckles bleed, if that’s what it takes.

Number three – make the best use you can of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. Scripture: the primary source and standard for Christian teaching. Tradition: the experience and witness of the church through the ages and in many nations and cultures. Reason: the faculties of rational thinking and intellect you bring to the discernment of truth. Experience: your understanding and application of faith in light of your own life. If you want to hear God, make the best use you can of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.

Number two – test and confirm what you hear in community with others. Asking to hear God’s address to you and seeking it in community with others provides at least these six benefits: it follows the example of Jesus; it guides us in growth of wisdom; it creates meaningful, supportive personal connections with others; it provides us with necessary encouragement in all of life’s blessings and challenges; it keeps us accountable to our commitment to grow in abundant life; and it transforms our families, workplaces, and communities. If you want to hear God, test and confirm what you hear in community with others.

And the number one way to hear God is to listen with your heart. Time and time again Jesus said about his teaching, “Let anyone with ears listen!” (e.g., Matt. 11:15). He was not talking about those appendages on the sides of your head. When St. Benedict established his rule for living in community, he rephrased what Jesus said, “Listen carefully, my child, to my instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.”

According to the Orthodox tradition, the principal thing about listening to God “is to stand with the mind in the heart before God, and to go on standing before Him unceasingly day and night, until the end of life” (Igumen Chariton of Valamo, The Art of Prayer). In other words, live life consciously and with full attention, otherwise you may not be living at all. The curriculum we study is our lives, and the wisdom we seek is already written on our hearts (cf. Jer. 31:31-34).