Conversation
This past Sunday I spoke at Bayside Woodland Church near Sacramento, California. It’s about eight hours’ drive from our home, and RobAnne and I decided to drive together. We were going to meet the music pastor of the church, who’s a good friend, and we wanted to take him and his wife out to dinner. That meant that RobAnne and I spent sixteen hours in the car together.
Do you know what happened? When all was said and done – and it was a long, fatiguing drive – conversation took place. Conversation takes work, time, and effort to put away the distractions. When you’re in a car for sixteen hours with your wife, there aren’t many other distractions.
We talked. We talked about our kids; we talked about our parents; we talked about our schedule. We talked about our jobs and what makes us excited about the future. We shared some of our feelings about our present situation. We also had time to listen to a couple of sermons from our son’s church. We listened to a lot of worship music.
The more I travel to visit our missionaries, and the more I understand what’s going on in our mission, the more I think we’re sometimes too busy for conversation. We’re too busy running around, doing what we think God calls us to do, to stop and have a solid, good conversation.
Conversation is a wonderful thing. It brings people together and feeds creativity. Knowing that it is so important, why don’t we have more conversations with God? Why do we make prayer all talking and no listening? Remember the Scripture that says, “My sheep hear my voice?” When is the last time you heard the voice of God? It was a long sixteen hours in a car, but the result was I know RobAnne better, and we are closer.
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