Quiet The Crowd

John 10:27 (NIV)

‘My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.’

I have the honour and privilege of being a god-parent to the most incredible little boy and one of the many things he has taught me in his two and a half years has been how deficient in hearing we adults can become from the daily cacophony of noise we’re exposed to.

When he was a little younger, he would regularly pick up on noises so familiar to me that I no longer noticed them. The sound of a helicopter or a distant siren would catch his attention and force me to focus mine and really listen to the noises around me, finding the one that had captured his interest. What I realised, was that the volume of noise in my life was making it difficult to hear the quiet voices.

Now, I know you’re thinking… Hazel, you are not the first person to have that revelation. And you’d be right! But in a world that is so loud and so saturated with different voices and opinions and words, few things have had more significance for me than the regular reminder of a 2-year-old’s behaviour to listen hard for God’s quiet voice in the noise and to stay sensitive to how he is speaking and moving in my sometimes busy and chaotic life. 

In this verse, Jesus uses the analogy of a shepherd and his sheep. Now, in case you haven’t been down the YouTube rabbit-hole of ‘strangers and shepherds calling their sheep’, one of the things you should know is that sheep have incredible hearing and are able to recognise the voice of their shepherd and respond only to that familiar voice. Here, Jesus offers us a powerful incentive to familiarise ourselves with the Word of God so that we, like the sheep in his illustration, are able to recognise the voice of our Father above all the noise.

Prayer – Father God, thank you that you are a good shepherd to us. Help us to hear your voice above the noise of our world.