“Don’t Talk to Strangers!” by Leo Aliaga, Fiat Ventures
Fourth Sunday of Easter
When we’re kids, we’re taught to beware of strangers. We’re told not to speak to people we don’t know, and certainly not to take candy from them or get into a car. “Stranger Danger!” We learn these things for our own safety. Sometimes strangers simply can be friends of our parents we haven’t met yet, or maybe someone we can trust like a doctor, and our parents give us the go-ahead to say “hi” or to stick out our tongue, respectively (and hopefully not the other way around!). But sometimes the voice of strangers can indeed be something we need to be cautious of.
On the other hand, there are some voices that we would know anywhere. When we were babies, we are able to recognize our parents’ voices, especially our mom’s since we resided in that cozy home with ‘womb service’ for nine months. When we are born, we are already familiar with the voices of our parents, and at the end of the first month outside the womb, we are only able to see about twelve inches in distance – which is just far enough to be able to recognize our parents’ faces when we are in their arms.
Another voice that we should know anywhere is God’s voice. As it says in Jeremiah 1: 5, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” Jesus in the Gospel this week talks about himself as a shepherd, and how his sheep know his voice and follow him. It’s usually not recognizing God’s voice that’s the problem for us though, it’s being able to hear it in the first place! I don’t know about you, but my life gets pretty noisy. When we’re connected all the time, we don’t have much quiet time to pray or even just to think.
For all we know, God might be trying to tell us something important right now. He might be trying to lead us on a certain path. Maybe God is calling somebody to be a priest, but that guy is so distracted that he can’t hear God’s voice. Maybe God is calling somebody to be generous with their time and money, but that person is listening to the ‘voices of strangers’ from things they’ve heard on the radio or read online, and they’re focusing on making as much money as possible just to have more zeros in their bank account.
Maybe we’re in the middle of a tough situation and God is trying to tell us that we can trust him or that everything’s going to be okay. Maybe we’ve been struggling with the same sin over and over again, and we need to hear God say “I forgive you.” If we don’t take the time to unplug and listen for God’s voice and to pray, we won’t hear the shepherd’s voice, and if we can’t hear it, how can he lead us?
Now the question is, how do we do that? How do we listen to God’s voice? Well for starters, we need to make the time to listen. Commit to 5 minutes to start off, either before you go to bed or when you wake up in the morning before your feet touch the floor. Prayer is a conversation, so we need to talk (the easy part), but then we need to listen. Try dusting off your Bible and reading through the Gospels. Or get a prayer app for your phone. Follow people on Twitter and Instagram who post scripture quotes. If you make the effort to listen, God will speak, and we can say with Samuel from the Old Testament, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”
