In The Whisper

I sit here, in my office, on a rainy day listening to Bjork and feeling very mellow. I can hear voices in the background from the hallway. These voices are not the voices I want to hear though. The phone rings and interrupts my train of thought. I begin to wonder if there is a point to even seeking to hear this voice that I long. Each time something interrupts me, the phone, an email, a message, my ADD. Yet I can't stop, it is like there is something intrinsic that causes me too seek and too long. Could it be that there is too much noise in my life? I know there is too much literal noise. But maybe there is too much internal noise. Is it possible for my soul to become so clogged with the internal crap that I deal with day to day? Or maybe I am looking for the wrong thing?
I think about Jesus. Where did he go to hear? What did he do for better hearing? As I look through the gospels I see that he got alone. I see he secluded himself from distraction. He had an outlet for the heart and soul. I need an outlet. I did in high school. I remember I would go to my keyboard every day after school and play and sing, I would worship God and I would write my praise, laments, anger and worship in song. I am older now and it is not as easy. I get distracted. I have obligations to a wife and my home, though it seems I look after these things at the expense of my soul (I was just distracted again for about an hour).
You see when your heart and soul are cluttered you can only hear the load stuff. Like when you have a head cold and the only way you can hear someone is if they kind of yell. When our life is cluttered it is like that. In first Kings 19 it relays the story of Elijah and the way in which the Lord appeared to him. Verse 11b begins, "a great powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earth, but the LORD was not in the earth quake. After the earthquake cam a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a Gentle Whisper." (1 Kings 19:11-12 NIV).
When Elijah heard the whisper he heard the voice of God. Elijah knew what to listen for. He didn't allow his ears to become cloudy; if they would have been he wouldn't have been able to hear. We need to purge ourselves. We need to surrender. It is time for us to find some alone time and focus on the voice of God.