Together with pandemic, lockdown and unprecedented, ‘you’re on mute’ is one of many words and phrases with which we’re now all too familiar. A year ago most of us had never heard of Zoom. Now we regularly stare at a screen trying to lip-read, hoping that whoever’s speaking will realise we can’t hear them before they have said too much.
But it’s not just each other’s voices we can’t hear. When we’re suffering its common to wonder where God is and why he seems to be on mute. Why doesn’t he say something? But maybe it’s not that he’s muted but rather that we’ve got our volume turned down?
In the Bible the prophet Isaiah says, ‘the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.’ As with failure in any relationship one of the first consequences of sin is a breakdown in communication. Our hearts become hard and our ears become dull. It’s not that God has stopped speaking but rather that we have stopped listening.
God is love and for those with ears to hear he will always have something to say.
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