Listening to His Voice

Screw resolutions. And no, I didn't just brake mine twelve days into January. I've blown them all before like some hell-bent boozer. Busted in January, broke in June; under my name there's a record of failures scattered across calendar months and years.

They're calling for my attention, for my improvement, that pile of books on my desk. Wendell Berry is speaking like a prophet, Edward Abby is beckoning, Tolstoy sputtering on. Puritans are hanging on my nightstand. Drink this older wine, they tell me: it helps the stomach, and goes down smooth. Magazines lie across the floor. The internet glistens with images and fonts and the damned weight of the present. "Know, know, know!" Hyperlinks draw my soul into a world of information that will surely set my feet strait, level my head, and polish hobbies into obsessions.

Then there's the journals sitting behind me—one red, one black. The lie with beautiful empty pages: spill the glory of your intellect here, and it will materialize into genius. My Google Docs tab is sitting open in the corner of my screen. It houses all those blog posts that swelled beyond the blog into gargantuan writing projects that will one day change the world. Screw them too.

The dust sits heavy on the corners of my desk. It sits pretty much everywhere else too. I've stepped over that pile of laundry ten times today. The crap on my carpet, waiting for a vacuum, bothers me. Dishes gather stink in the sink. There's fuzzies on my teeth (ok, just brushed my teeth. Too gross to wait).

All these amount to a forest fire of voices, screaming in my ear, burning up my world, pushing me beneath the covers again. "Improve yourself." "Know your world." "Stop being a slob." "Be a man, for God's sake!" "Stop sitting on your ass." "Be serious for once: devote yourself, be serious, be passionate." The problem is they hit all too close to home, close to truth.

I can't stop listening, caring, obeying. Not most of the time. These voices attack my faults, and I hate my faults. I'm tired of these voices, of their tyranny, of their occasional wisdom. I want to open my window and scream obscenities at all the urgent voices in my head, in my room. I want to screw every 'ought to', 'supposed to' and 'should' I see.

There is another voice. It whispers, just audible. I ignore this one too, especially ignore it. It doesn't do blurbs, or advertisements. It doesn't preach improvement or offer steps to a better life. It offers life.

Yeah, you all know what I'm talking about. Before you regulate all my writing to the trite and cliche, listen to another's words. Listen to his words:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 

In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son...He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. 

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning  the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

How dare we ignore this voice, this voice who is a person? How can we turn a deaf ear to the word who is man, and God? There is nothing trite or false in these words. His word are full of truth and life. They are life. And yet the mundane and practical and urgent rages on.

Sometimes I needs resolutions. Some days I need to pray. Today is a praying kind of day. A day I ask my Father to fill me with his Word today, for 2012. I don't need self improvement. I need to listen to his voice. I need the Spirit to change my heart to treasure and love and pursue all the beauty and joy and glory and treasure of His words.