One of the unexpected joys of Spring in my home in Indy has been the humming birds. We’d never actually seen any hummingbirds in our area, and I wasn’t really sure that in a major city there was actually going to be much of a population of them. Much to our delight, they started showing up immediately and would even hover at the windows eye level with our cats (much to their excitement and frustration). Now we have come to expect them as a typical harbinger of warmer weather. When the windows are open, even when we aren’t looking, we know that they are there, because we can hear the tell-tale sound of their particular wings fluttering at that amazingly rapid pace. It’s beautiful and calming and always brings a smile to my face. It also always surprises me though. My logical brain is taken aback that the sounds of the smallest bird in the world’s fluttering wings can be heard so clearly over the street sounds of a city of almost 900K very loud and noisy humans. It seems like such a thing would be impossible. Maybe I hear them because I am listening for them.
This is how I imagine it is with us and the Spirit. The Spirit is always present, even when we haven’t taken the time to previously notice or pay attention, and once we become aware of it and attuned to listening for it, all the background noise and distraction can’t prevent us from hearing it. God is ever speaking to us, through the Word, through Creation, through our Neighbors and our Fellowship of Faith. The only question is if we are listening.