A Carrot in My Ear

When my sisters and I were young, we periodically dredged up that old joke:

“You’ve got a carrot in your ear!”

“What?”

(Louder) “You’ve got a carrot in your ear!”

“What?”

YOU’VE GOT A CARROT IN YOUR EAR!!

“I can’t hear you; I’ve got a carrot in my ear.”

If you fail to see the humor, what can I say – we loved it, which does not mean it was necessarily funny. But the joke does have something to say about our spiritual sense of hearing. We learned Sunday that hearing is the first sense to return when one is regaining consciousness, and the last to leave when one is fading out. And many of us agree that we long to be more conscious of God, but for some reason we just aren’t hearing from Him.

We lament His silence. We yearn for His voice. We remember how thrilling it was the last time He actually said something to us. We pray for Him to speak again. We listen, but hear only silence.

It’s all those carrots in our ears. Carrots like...

1. Willfulness. We want to hear some kind of guidance from the Spirit, but we’re gonna weigh what He says before committing 100%.
2. Doubt. Although we ask, we’re not sure we can count on an answer. (“That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord” James 1:7 NIV).
3. Busyness. We race around like chickens with our heads cut off, then freeze for five seconds to listen for God’s voice. Nothing yet? Then it’s off to the races again.
4. Fear. We desperately need to hear from God, but we’re petrified of what He might say. What if it’s too hard? What if it’s precisely those words we dread to hear? Might hearing be worse than this silence?
5. Noise. The voice of the Spirit is a gentle whisper. (after all, how many times do we read, “and God shouted…”?) I hope I’m not stealing from next Sunday’s sermon when I say that only after the wind, earthquake and fire had taken a back seat did Elijah hear the still, small voice of the Lord. Any commotion going on in our lives? It’s highly likely we’ll need to steal away to a quiet place where whispers can be heard.

Willfulness. Doubt. Busyness. Fear. Noise. We’d love to hear from God… but we’ve got these carrots in our ears…