![]() ![]() Having thus appeased our heart, we nonetheless are forced to give up our spiritual journey because our heart will no longer come with us. We make sure to maintain enough distance between ourselves and others, and even between ourselves and our own heart, to keep hidden the practical agnosticism we are living now that our inner life has been divorced from our outer life. We learn to enjoy the juicy intrigues and secrets of gossip. We try to lose ourselves in our work, or "get a hobby" (either of which soon begins to feel like an addiction) we have an affair, or develop a colorful fantasy life fed by dime-store romances or pornography. Others of us agree to give our heart a life on the side if it will only leave us alone and not rock the boat. Come morning, the new day's activities scream for our attention, the sound of the cry is gone, and we congratulate ourselves on finally overcoming the flesh. But sometimes in the night, when our defenses are down, we still hear it call to us, oh so faintly - a distant whisper. Frustrated by our heart's continuing sabotage of a dutiful Christian life, some of us silence the voice by locking our heart away in the attic, feeding it only the bread and water of duty and obligation until it is almost dead, the voice now small and weak. Having so long been out of touch with our deepest longing, we fail to recognize the voice and the One who is calling to us through it. ![]() In our modern, pragmatic world we often have no such mentor, so we do not understand it is God speaking to us in our heart. ![]() Rather than ignoring the voice, or rebuking it, Samuel finally listened. Even so, it took them three times to realize it was God calling. When the young prophet Samuel heard the voice of God calling to him in the night, he had the counsel from his priestly mentor, Eli, to tell him how to respond. ![]()
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