Paying Attention

I’m hearing voices I didn’t use to hear. Okay, maybe I heard them, but I didn’t pay attention to them.

Now before you get all worried and start slipping me phone numbers of good shrinks in our area, let me fill you in a little more.

The voices I’m talking about belong to birds—yes, the songs and calls of our feathered friends. I used to hear them as the background and soundtrack to the great outdoors of my life, but they’ve become something more the past several months.

It’s dawned on me that these voices—these songs—belong to certain species of birds, and if I pay attention, I can learn to identify their calls.And if I can identify their calls and am alert to their voices, I have a better chance of capturing  photos—especially of the ones I’m most interested in, like cardinals.  (Kind of neat how my interest in birds has sprung from my interest in taking good pictures, huh?)

So now I listen more. When I hear a bird call, many times I stop momentarily and pay attention. I look for the bird, listen, and then try to remember its sound for future reference.

To be honest, I haven’t figured many out yet, but I have made some progress. I’ve discovered birds even have different calls for different purposes. For example, cardinals sing, but they also cheep-cheep-cheep while feeding and looking for food. I never would have realized that, though, if I hadn’t become alert to them, if I hadn’t started paying attention.

I wonder how many times God tries to communicate with us and we miss it. I wonder if  his voice gets lost in the soundtrack of our lives, especially  if we relegate him to the background and neglect to listen for him.

What blessings might we capture, what pearls of wisdom might we learn if we decide to be alert to God’s voice—to listen for him and then stop and pay attention when we hear him call?

Many voices compete for our attention today, don’t they? Let’s not miss the most important one. Let’s tune our ears to hear the song of our Savior and our God!

“Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say.” Isaiah 28:23

*What voices are you paying attention to?

*Flickr photo by fauxto_digit