54 Minutes

I was on the phone with someone for 54 minutes last week, and 54 minutes was all I could take. At some point during the conversation, the person said, "I'm working on being a better listener. Sometimes I have to be reminded, though. So, you can tell me when I'm talking too much." And I thought, "No, I can't.

"There's no point in it. When you do pause in your monologue long enough to ask me something, you don't truly seem to care about my perspective on it. You're digging for information, then relate what I've said to something that applies to you, and the monologue resumes."

During the 54 minutes, I got my kitchen cleaned up, took the trash out, checked Facebook, etc. And then, I was done.

"Okay," I said abruptly. "I'm gonna go do some other stuff." The person then asked questions about my life; I answered them briefly, said goodbye, and ended the conversation.

A while later, I was listening to a podcast in which the teacher happened to be talking about being quiet enough to listen to God. We tend to prattle on and fill our lives with spiritual and emotional noise, and really just need to [shhhhh] and wait on Him.

And...I got it. He doesn't want to just tolerate us--for 54 minutes or longer or shorter. He doesn't want to have to interrupt our thread in order to say something important from Him. We'd probably miss it anyway, because we're still too focused on our own thing. He wants us to want relationship with Him, to want to listen to Him, to think that He may say something interesting or important.

Thanks for the lesson, my 54-minute-friend!