Early this week I left my three month old son with my mother-in-law while I went for a run. When I returned to the house, I found him reclining on her bed seemingly fixated on an episode of “Curious George” on the television. I said his name, but there was no response. I said it again. Still nothing. Since I know he does not have a hearing problem, I had to laugh. “Just like his father,” I thought.

For some reason, whenever my husband is watching TV, he seems “incapable” of hearing me. It’s as though his ears are only able to make meaning of the sounds coming from that mesmerizing box. I could tell him that I was moving to the moon and he would probably nod his head and say, “Okay, dear.”

In my experience, this seems to be a condition that mostly afflicts men. A friend told me that once she tried speaking with her husband while he was watching TV. His response? He took the remote and turned up the volume. Of course, this made her quite angry. But when she related the story to me, I told her that I highly doubted that he was intentionally trying to be rude and shut her out. Instead, I think he was so mesmerized by the TV that he knew that something was disturbing and distracting his watching, but didn’t necessarily connect that it was his wife.

As I reflected on these somewhat humorous occurrences, I couldn’t help but think if this is what it’s like with us and God. So often, we say that we want to hear from God. We want Him to speak to us. Yet we feel like He is silent.

But what if He is speaking? What if He’s speaking quite loudly, we’re just too mesmerized and distracted by other things to hear Him? In fact, what if we’re so mesmerized by these things that we actually “turn up the volume” on them, thereby becoming even less able to hear His voice?

I can just picture the Lord drawing ever closer to us, each time saying, “Can you hear me? Can you HEAR me? CAN YOU HEAR ME?” And all the while, we are so fixated on our own worlds that we cannot. Or else, if we hear Him, our own fixations keep us from responding and acting upon what He says.

And so I must ask myself: Can I hear the Lord speaking to me? And if not, perhaps I must dig deep to see if I have allowed other things to captivate my heart. Perhaps I must ask the Lord to reveal what those things are so that I can “turn down their volume.” Then when He says my name and asks, “Can you hear me?,” I will be able to say, “Yes, Lord. And I’m ready to do Your will.”