Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Listening and Looking for What?

In his book From Survival to Celebration, Howard Hanchey tells this story:

"Two people were walking along a crowded sidewalk in a downtown business area. Suddenly one exclaimed: 'Listen to the lovely sound of that cricket.' But the other could not hear. He asked his companion how he could detect the sound of a cricket amid the din of people and traffic. The first man, who was a zoologist, had trained himself to listen to the voices of nature. But he didn't explain. He simply took a coin out of his pocket and dropped it to the sidewalk, whereupon a dozen people began to look about them. 'We hear,' said the zoologist, 'what we listen for.' "

Then he makes his point:

"Mission-minded Christians enjoy, more than anything else, the work of listening and looking for signs of God at work in the world. As a result, their common life rings with both a present strength and a future hope."

3 comments:

Agent X said...

I went to the George Otis Jr - Healing the Land Conference in Ft Worth back in Oct 05 with my buddy David Shelburne. Otis had a side kick presenter there named Winkie Pratney who played an audio clip of Crickets set at two speeds simultaneously. One speed was regular, the other was slowed down to approximate a cricket with a life span comparable to a human.

In the one speaker you hear crickets like normal. In the other, you hear a symphony of haunting orchestral music and near human voices singing in an undiscernable language.

It is powerful to think of how God hears his Creation growning or singing his praises.

I bought a copy of it on CDROM and my mom just loves it. I had lost it until last night. Now I have it again. I wish to post it on my blog, but I am tech challenged and do not know how. If you or any of your readers can help me, please do! I would love to share it.

Great post. Thanks.

Jesus is Lord!

TREY MORGAN said...

Love the thoughts here. I have to agree 100 percent. The world tries hard to choke out the good stuff. I just need to focus my listening on what's important and spiritual.

I know there are so many things I don't hear that I should. Everyday the birds sing, but I don't stop and listen like I should. I wonder if the birds quit singing everyday, and instead only sang one day out of the year if we'd all take off work and spend the day listening to the birds.

Thanks for your thoughts ...

Agent X said...

Hey Frank & Trey,

Check out this old post on Matt Tapie's blog. I think it deals with the same subject matter in stark terms. Follow the link in his post and see what you think. A virtuoso violinist plays in the subway in DC and too few notice!

Sorry, I do not know how to link it here- must cut and paste...

http://twocitiesblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/in-banal-setting-at-inconvenient-time.html