I have an old backup email account that’s mostly subscriptions. There are newsletters, promotions, updates, and who knows what else I signed up for twenty years ago--it's a Hotmail account, after all. Thousands of emails can pile up. For the longest time, I would scan through them before deleting anything.
Because what if I missed something?
Only recently did I decide it wasn’t worth it. Now, I select them all and hit delete. Every one of those emails was delivered. But delivered doesn’t mean read. I wonder how often that’s true of what God is trying to tell me.
In Romans 10, Paul asks, “have they not heard?” His answer is yes, God's good news had gone out. But hearing isn’t the same as listening.
You can hear something and not really hear it. Not really receive it. You know that. You can sit through a sermon, sing a hymn, hear the same nudging from God again and again, and still mentally hit delete.
Thankfully, our problem isn’t that God has gone silent. The good news is still getting published, so to speak. We’re just really good at filtering.
At the end of the chapter, God says, “All day long I have held out my hands.”
All day long. Even toward people who aren’t listening.
Hear me, friend, when I say that your inattentiveness to the Lord doesn’t make God absent. God doesn’t get frustrated, hit “unsubscribe,” and move on. God keeps reaching.
Surely, God's goodness and mercy keep running after us.
Maybe there’s something God has been trying to get through to you lately. The good news is that God hasn’t stopped speaking. Maybe today is a good day to open the message.
Stay blessed...john
Comments