Seeking His Voice.

“To be Continued”,   that is how my last blog ended Monday night.  I was up until 12:30 Wednesday morning writing about Lesson #1--Trust Enough to Tell.  As I wrote and rewrote,  edited and reedited, questions like, “How did I learn that and when?  Why did I learn it?  How has it affected my life?  Has it changed me?” kept arising. I finally decided to go to bed and finish in the morning, so I got up at 7:00 and started typing.  My hopes of completing and posting before I left for Bible study at 9:30 were dashed. It wasn’t going to happen.

Don’t worry, it will be completed.  So will the other lessons, but I feel the questions filling my mind need to be answered first if I am honestly sharing them as lessons the Lord taught me.  I want people to understand how they happened to me and their final results.  Actually, final results are misnomers because God’s results are not and will not be final until He returns. I probably should say, "Results up to this point." Right now my mind is filled with so many ways to organize my thoughts and different ways I can effectively communicate, that I need to really pray for both clarity and wisdom as I proceed.  Please bear with me.

In the mean time I will share a grandchild story I have told quite often to the grandkids who love to hear stories about themselves.  In fact, after a grandchild read the slug story on the blog, she told her mother, “That is not a Jan’s Jottings.  That is a Jan’s Re-Jotting.”  So, here is a Jan’s Re-Jotting.

When one of my grandsons was just a little tyke, he loved to hide in plain sight.  If he couldn’t see me, I couldn’t see him. One day when I was washing dishes I heard his little voice call out, “Nana, Nana”.  I looked to where the voice was coming from and clearly saw him under the dining room table.

I decided to humor him and play his game. So, I chose to ignored him and kept washing dishes. It wasn't long before I again heard, “Nana, Nana."

“Hmmm.  Did I hear something? “  I muttered loud enough for him to hear.  I then proceeded to go the fridge, open it up, and start rummaging around.  “No, it’s not coming from the apples or the milk or the cheese.  Maybe it’s coming from the freezer instead.”  I opened the freezer and exclaimed, “I know! It’s in the ice cream.”  Again I rummaged around looking for what was not to be found.

After washing another dish, I shouted out my new insight, “Ah ha!  It must becoming from outside.  I bet it is in the tree.  Nope, I don’t see anyone there.  The garage roof, maybe.   Nope, it’s not there. The ferns?”  I finally sighed a disappointed sigh and moaned, “I must have been hearing things.”

In a matter of seconds I felt little arms clutch my legs and heard a laughing voice shout, “Nana, here I am!”

“Where were you?” I questioned.

“Nana I was right here all the time. You didn’t look in the right place.”  He then hugged my legs even tighter.

Isn’t that the way we are with our Lord?  There are times we hear him call our voice, but chose to ignore it awhile.  When we finally seek him, we look in all the wrong places.  Food and nature are just a couple places we search, but to no avail.  Sometimes we decide we are only imagining his callings and urgings, and just give up.  He finally has to grab us and say, “Here I am.”

“Where were you, Lord?”

“I was with you all the time?  You were just looking in the wrong places”