one Voice & the loudest place on the planet
In a large airport, at a sold-out concert, on a crowded, city sidewalk … it’s hard to hear just one voice. Even if someone is sitting quite close, the buzz of all the voices can make listening to just one person much more difficult.
But there is a place that is louder than the Denver airport, or a Taylor Swift concert or on the streets of New York City. The internet is the loudest place on the planet.
So many people, so many messages, expressions of urgency. The voices step up on platforms, with ever widening circles of influence and sometimes, no … if I am being honest, far too many times, I am sucked into the riotous crowd. Following their voices, heeding their instructions, whipped into a frenzy.
Last week, at Wind River Ranch, I had the chance to step away from the loudest place. And that’s when I heard …
What are you doing, Susie?You listen intently how the world marks success. You read, you bookmark, you duplicate. But just like Elijah, no Voice in those storms.
So I am going to whisper now … what will you do with the voice I’ve given you? How will you tell our story? Can you engage in the loudest place without following the other voices and heeding their instructions? Can you listen for my Voice among the din of voices? Put aside platform, popularity, press ~ and simply relay life listening to one Voice, my Voice.
The reproof was sound. But it hurt. And oh, I felt so small. So squished up and messed up that I didn’t think I could write. Not big enough to tell you what I heard … and yet His whisper to relay life listening to one Voice, my Voice.
So here it is: I will not worry for success, chase after applause. I will not become deaf to that one, most important Voice.
I’ll seek quiet in the places I choose to go in this loudest place on earth and I will listen to one Voice. And I pray, dear God with all that’s in me, I pray ~ that He will always have “peculiar power in taking possession” of my heart.
It concerns us often to ask whether we are in our place, and in the way of our duty. Am I where I should be? Whither God calls me, where my business lies, and where I may be useful? Despair of success hinders many a good enterprise. Did Elijah come hither to meet with God? He shall find that God will meet him. The wind, and earthquake, and fire, did not make him cover his face, but the still voice did. Gracious souls are more affected by the tender mercies of the Lord, than by his terrors. The mild voice of Him who speaks from the cross, or the mercy-seat, is accompanied with peculiar power in taking possession of the heart.