Article March 7, 1970 Issue

Are You Listening?

KATHRYN PAULSON GROUNDS

It is a truism that if one talks too much he listens little, if at all. When two individuals try to communicate, mutuality demands that each should occasionally listen. If this is true in ordinary communication, how much more necessary it is in prayer!

Have you ever stopped to think how little we listen to God? We are prone to spend much time apprising Him of our needs, and we may even attempt to inform Him of His goodness and all-power. But beneficial as these periods of petition and affirmation may be, they are secondary to the silent, selfless periods of listening for the divine commands and reassurances. The readying of thought for listening may well be a holy time of humble acknowledgment of God as the all-hearing Mind, the all-governing Principle, and of man as His individualized idea, but it remains a preparatory activity designed to turn the mental footsteps in the direction of the sanctuary of spiritual at-one-ment with God.

If the balance of weight in prayer is on the side of telling the heavenly Father what we humanly need or think, we run the danger of eventually using prayer to serve self-will, which attempts to command and demand rather than hearken and obey. What we think we want and what divine Mind knows we need are not necessarily the same! Perhaps the prophet Zechariah had this in view when he cried to his people, "Be silent, O all flesh, before the Lord."^{ Zech. 2:13;}

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