On her 16th birthday she met a young man whose presence filled the room. Three weeks later they were married and by the time she was 25, she’d given birth to five children. Over the years, their dinner table became a place of vigorous exchange, peppered with zealous interruptions and intense debate.  She, however, mostly sat back and observed, a quiet witness to the noisy chaos. A friend once asked her if she ever got a word in, to which she quickly replied: “Well, someone has to listen.”

In the last few blogs, I have written about our need to feel known, positing that not only is God’s gaze ever on you and me, but that he delights in what he sees (Read that blog here). To live for God’s pleasure, I suggested, is our highest privilege and greatest joy, if we can get past the hurdles that hinder us (read that blog here). 

​As fulfilling as it is to be seen by God, he doesn’t intend for it to stop there. In fact, Jesus says to each of us, freely you have received, freely give. If  I could wish for one thing this year, it would be that we would all get better at giving the gift every person longs for, but seldom receives, the gift of being heard.

How many people can you think of who really show up when you have something to share, who bring their undivided attention to the table when you are serving up your thoughts, who seem to really want to know you from the inside out?  According to a burgeoning body of research, listening well has become a thing of the past, leading to a dearth of social connections and what the  U.S. surgeon general has labeled an  “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.”**

Someone has to listen...but most don’t. And before we pass judgment, the research also shows that most of us think we are much better at listening than we really are.  Listening well is a lost art for a host of reasons, and I’d like to suggest that as people of faith, we are uniquely graced to turn this around.  

What if, instead of focusing on our own need to be heard, we took Jesus at his word that it is more blessed to give than to receive? This would mean that our own happiness lies in prioritizing people, listening to them in a way that they feel deeply cared for.  

While this is easier said than done, a little effort can go a long way in making others feel heard. To that end, here are some tips for developing this much-needed skill, using the acrostic Listen.

​Most of us simply do not know how to listen. It hasn’t been modeled well but because the need is so great, a single google search will turn up a plethora of free resources. Be a learner by setting an intention to discover something new every week about the art of listening and then put it into practice. A great read on the topic is How to Know a Person by David Brooks.

An invitation is a kind request for someone’s presence or participation. We want to have an inviting heart posture when others speak. Asking questions rather than giving advice or telling your own stories is the best way to do this. If curiosity doesn’t come natural for you, develop a list of options to rely on. Here are a few I keep handy: Can you tell me more about... What has this been like for you? How are you navigating these things? I heard you saying________________. Can you unpack that for me some? What did it feel like when that happened?

​The only way we can create space for others to be heard is by silencing distractions. We need to put away our phones or silence notifications if we want to have a meaningful connection with someone. Even more important, we need to simply stop talking about ourselves. Only as we silence every urge to make ourselves the center of the conversation, can we listen well to the words others share. 

​Let’s face it—the badges of busyness we wear are not conducive to meaningful conversation. When we are hurried, others can feel that they are a bother when they share something with us. It doesn’t have to be this way. Even when we only have a few minutes to chat, we can act like we have all the time in the world for them. How? By leaning in, nodding, looking people in the eye, following what they are saying and offering expressions of interest such as: Really? Wow! No kidding! That’s great! How hard! Amazing! Oh no! etc.

​People are amazing and every conversation can be a journey of exploration to discover the fascinating twists and turns of their stories, which are often peppered with pain. Listening well is like going on a treasure hunt—an incredible privilege that only human beings have, so enjoy the process!

Work at noticing how a person is engaging in the conversation—not just with their words, but with body language and facial expressions. Notice tension or tears, weariness or anxiety, pain or perception, and don’t be afraid to mention what you see. For example, I see some tears there...what is that about? Or This seems distressing to you, can you tell me about it? or I can see this really matters to you...

There is so much more to be said about listening well, but these six steps are a great starting place and can make a difference in whether the people you encounter feel seen, heard, and ultimately loved.
​

Someone has to listen.
​
​Mom is 95 now and her short-term memory is slipping a bit. Yet day in and day out, she continues to show up to every person she encounters. Whether in person or on a facetime call, her eyes always light up when she sees me and immediately asks about my day. I’m not the only one. She has a fairly steady stream of visitors—from kids to grandkids to neighbors to old friends from afar—who have experienced the wonder of her lifelong mantra--someone has to listen.

**https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/27/magazine/loneliness-epidemic-cure.html​

​​It was the gentlest whisper... I was at a worship night with a dear friend I’d brought, knowing God wanted to lavish her with love to soothe the suffering she’d endured for years. I held her 3-month-old baby while she encountered God through the glorious praise that filled the room. 

Wrapped up in the wonder of it all, I found myself asking God for a personal touch-a word, a vision, a tangible expression of his presence. I waited in quiet hope, and that’s when I heard it—that gentlest of whispers saying thank you.
​
Thank you? Was it even feasible that the Almighty, the One we were exalting in that place, would reach down and whisper words of gratitude to me? I was starting to question my theological acumen, but then I heard it again...thank you.

Tears now flowing, I understood that God was giving me the gift of his pleasure. He knew better than anyone what it has taken for me to stay faithful through a rough season and wanted me to experience his gratitude. I still can’t quite fathom the mystery of such a thing.
​
In the last two blogs I have written of God’s delight in us, something I believe ought to be a bedrock of every person’s spiritual journey. Yet having walked alongside others for decades, I know that most people find it difficult, if not impossible to believe that God’s face lights up when he sees them, that their pilgrimage with him, fraught as it might be with flaws and failures, still brings him immense joy.  

Why do we find this so hard to take in? I have shared how our stories, imprinted on our brains from childhood, create a lens through which we often  view God, making it hard to connect with how he really feels about us. Unfortunately, many of these stories have their roots in our religious upbringing, in the churches of our childhoods.
​
Although I hold deep gratitude for the Baptist church where I came to know Jesus, I have spent a lot of years casting off yokes it gave me that Jesus never intended.  Simply put, the message I learned to embody was that it was all up to me. And  if it was all up to me, then it was all about me, and I knew I’d never be able to do enough or even be enough for God to approve of, much less take joy in me.   

This, I believe, is at the crux of the most egregious error churches make. Well intentioned as we may be in trying to prod believers toward faithfulness, a Christianity that focuses on our works, our efforts, our zeal or our effectiveness, denigrates the very centerpiece of our faith—the cross of Christ.

Paul faced this in dealing with Jews who were trying to coerce young Gentile believers to live up to their religious law. You can feel his frustration when he declares: “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:21)
​
Do you see this? When our religious experience keeps us at the center, subtly extolling self-reliance and human effort, we nullify grace and disparage the exorbitant price Jesus paid to make us new. It becomes impossible then for us to experience God’s pleasure, caught up as we are in ourselves and how well we are getting the job done (or not).

I am not saying we have no part in our growth journey, or that there won’t be seasons of repentance or restoration when we’ve sinned and grieved our Lord. But even then, what I know is that when God looks at me, he sees a woman made perfect by his Son’s righteousness, and he loves what he sees.

The blood of Christ on Calvary covers my faults and failures, my sins and my shortcomings, and though I am ever aware of how much I still need to grow in grace, I find comfort in the reality that it is not up to me, and that it is not about me, but about the One who gave his all, the beautiful Savior who purchased me for himself and delights to call me his own.
​
The miracle of grace is this; that God takes pleasure for the things that he has done in me. Then he imparts the gift of letting me experience his delight, and this makes me want to follow and serve and obey and love him even more. He smiles at this...and my joy is full. 

​Her name was Mrs. Yuke, the third-grade teacher who beckoned me to the front of the class to push my bangs out of my eyes, securing them with bobby pins she’d brought from home.  “Who fixes your hair anyway?” she asked, shaking her head as she sent me back to my seat. That experience, and perhaps others I’ve forgotten, spewed shame across the landscape of my developing soul, making me dread the prospect of school every day. You can see the sadness in my eyes.

​​But then, along came Mrs. Korevec, my fourth-grade teacher. Perhaps all her students felt the same, but I was convinced I was her favorite. I couldn’t wait to get to school each day because I knew that when I did, her face was going to light up with joy.  
My face tells a story in these pictures, but what made the difference? It clearly wasn’t because I’d improved my hair styling skills, as you can see. Simply put, these teachers treated me differently because they saw me differently. How I felt about myself was a direct reflection of that. This is, in fact, what it means to be human, that we come into the world looking for identity through the eyes of others. How we feel seen, especially in our formative years, will shape our way of being in the world.

​In my last blog I wrote of what it feels like to be unseen, asserting that God gazes at each of us with joyful wonder. Experiencing God’s pleasure, I claimed, has become the elixir of my life, even when—especially when—it feels as if no one else sees me at all. The problem, of course, is that we struggle to believe that God takes delight in us, that joy is his default response when he looks our way.
Do you feel the happiness in God’s gaze? Do you believe that he experiences joy as he watches you manage your life, even with its flaws and failures? For decades of my faith journey, this was beyond me. I know I am not alone. In the next few blogs, I will share some thoughts on some common obstacles to living within the warmth of God’s smile. 

Today Joe and I are finishing a 3-day fast. Fasting  is one of the toughest spiritual disciplines for me, even though I always experience God’s presence in amazing ways. When I started this fast, I was secretly hoping I could turn it into a long water fast—like 21 or even 40 days! Why? Last night God showed me that he had never called me to this, but that I wanted to do it because I know people who have. This mantra--if they can do it, I should be able to-has always played like a song in the back of my mind.
 
Where did this come from? The answer is complex, but in a nutshell, I was a middle child of five and I decided early on that the way to get to the top of the heap of the humans in our home was by being the best at whatever I did. (Add to that I’m an enneagram three—achiever—by nature and you see the odds were stacked against me).
​
I carried this into adulthood and my relationship with God. I was a model of dutiful obedience, working hard to be at the top of the heap. For years I did not feel God rejoicing over me, consumed as I was with getting his attention, with securing his approval.

What ways might your relationship with God be tainted by experiences from your past? From our earliest years, we develop coping mechanisms to handle the neglect, abandonment, rejection or even abuse we suffer from living in a fallen world. If we don’t address them, these patterns will obstruct the brightness of God’s face shining on us like a solar eclipse of the sun. The wonder of our Creator’s delight, the very thing that can make us feel seen and known and loved, will remain hidden behind the strongholds of self-protection that are embedded in our souls.

There can be no better description of how God feels about us than Paul’s treatise in 1 Corinthians 13, a litany of love that is profound and extravagant. God is love, and this means he is not only patient and kind, but bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. What would it take for you to live in the spacious wonder of this?   
​
There is a clue in Paul’s coda to his love symphony. He writes that when he was a child, he spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child. However, in the process of growing up, he put these childish ways aside. Have you ever processed how your childhood experiences have shaped your relationship with God, creating roadblocks  to one of the most valuable of all spiritual currencies—his joy in who you are? 

This is no small thing. If the lens through which we view God makes us keep our distance or puts us on a treadmill of performance, we will never know or be known by him in the way our souls desperately need.

​Paul ended his treatise on love by explaining that the tradeoff for putting away childish things is a promise, a partial fulfillment of our destiny:
                       For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know                         fully, even as I have been fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12).
What might it take to trade your outdated defenses for true intimacy with Jesus? I've learned that the process feels at times like looking in a dirty mirror, but if we persist, we will glimpse the pleasure of God’s face shining back at us in love. As we cling to the hope of seeing Jesus face to face one day, we press on, knowing that when we do, we will grasp at last how fully God has seen and known and loved us all along.  

Do you ever have days when it feels like no one really knows who you are? As if you and the things you do are invisible to the people whose paths you cross—at work or school or even home?
I thought of this recently when I heard a story about the first walk on the moon. I remember well huddling around our television with my family in 1969 and hearing those famous words: That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong soon became household names, our heroes who brokered the hope that anything is possible. 

​This story, however, was about the third man on that mission, Michael Collins, an astronaut most of us have never heard of. While Aldrin and Armstrong took their famous moon walk, Collins was manning the mother-ship, orbiting around the moon alone for some 21 hours. For 48 minutes of every hour, Collins circled the dark side of the moon outside of all human contact. When the time was right, Collins performed the perilous task of picking up and safely securing Aldrin and Armstrong for the return trip to earth. It is no understatement to say that Apollo 11 would never have achieved its mission without Collins. Yet to most of the world to this day, he remains hidden, unseen, and unknown.

,​Hidden…unseen…unknown. These have become buzz words in the influencer culture of our day. It’s as if our lonely angst, fueled by a cacophony of virtual voices that cannot deliver what we need, has generated a collective cry—does anyone know me? Does anyone see me? Does anyone care? 

​Navigating my senior years (ugh—that feels painful to write) brings many challenges, but also provides a perspective that is worth its weight in gold. It is simply this: No matter what contribution I might make, no matter how seen or known I might feel in any given moment, no one will remember me in 50 years. Rather than setting me back, this reality has unleashed in me a joyful lightness of being. I see things differently now.

For example, several times a week I drive by a church building that used to bear the name New Hope Church. That edifice represents an investment that consumed my thoughts and dreams and kingdom work for 38 years. It is now home to a group of people who love Jesus, but to whom I am unseen and unknown. Though the memories are still strong and passing by can feel bittersweet, two resounding truths settle my soul and fill me with gratitude.

First, whatever I build in my life is only possible because someone else said “yes” to God’s call long before I did. When I look at that building, I remember a man named Don McGregor who lived in the area and prayed relentlessly for a church until we came. I think of my Aunt Naomi who first challenged me to fall in love with Jesus. Her ashes, now scattered on the roof are a testament to faithfulness—hers and God’s. 

I planted and Apollos watered…Paul wrote, reminding us that in the end, God alone gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6). Our being seen or known seems less important when we consider the host of others who paved the way for us to bring our widow’s mite into the treasury of God’s kingdom.   
​

I am also humbled by the wonder that when I don’t see God’s promises fulfilled, I may be making a way for someone else’s fruitfulness. Through our faith journey, God provides something better for those to come, whether or not they ever know our names (Hebrews 11:40). I am a link in the chain of God’s glorious plan from one generation to another, and this astounds me.

​The greatest treasure, however, is that the God who made me, who knows me better than I know myself, takes joy in the tiniest acts of service I might perform on any given day. This mystery, that I can bring pleasure to the One who sees and loves me every moment of every day is the passion that drives me. C.S. Lewis called it a weight of glory:

​​So it is. This weight or burden of glory is the brilliance of God’s smile when his face shines on me. It is the elixir of my life and nothing else comes close to the wonder. I wish I had the words…


​
IN THE NEXT BLOG...I know that receiving God's delight is easier said than done. I will unpack some things that keep us from the wonder of experiencing his pleasure in my next blog. 

I don't remember Lent and Valentine's Day intersecting before in my lifetime, but I can't think of a more beautiful convergence. What greater demonstration of love has there ever been than Jesus giving his life for our sins so that we might live in his love? 
Lent begins on Valentine's Day, a holiday with roots traced to the life and death of a 3rd century Roman priest named Valentinus. Tradition tells of how he was known to secretly wed Christian lovers who were forbidden to marry by the Roman government. When he was caught and arrested, the emperor Claudius II took a liking to him, but apparently at some point when Valentinus tried to share the gospel with him, he was condemned to death. One account suggests that he healed the daughter of Claudius of blindness before he died and wrote her a note, signing it from your Valentine. Valentinus was beaten, stoned and finally beheaded for his faith.
This man who unwittingly gave us the holiday of hearts and love, followed in the footsteps of our Savior whose suffering we ponder through the season of Lent. To that end, I invite you to go with me on a lectio divina journey with Jesus through his final hours. I cannot fathom a more powerful way to learn to live in the love for which we were created. Join me in Living Loved through Lent--​see how below.