Can you hear me now?

The video & quote below are excerpts from a post I found over at It's Like Herding Cats...A Pastor's Life - this morning:

....I opened with a video of world famous violinist Joshua Bell playing in the Washington DC metro station as commuters just stream by without stopping to listen. Bell sells out performances all over the world, performing with his priceless Stradivarious. But in that context, with those people, very few heard him. The music and the messenger were the same that had sold out the theater the night before. The problem was the listeners didn't "have ears to hear."

David A. Wilson

My thoughts: The artist is world famous. The instrument he uses is priceless. The setting ... the mundane daily routine of life. For SO many (too often myself included!) it's SO distracting. Imagine how much tickets cost to hear him play otherwise - and how much more valuable they become once a performance is sold out. Hmm....This all reminds me of Someone Else I Know. What I would give to see Him live & in person & to hear Him speak! Yet I'm also reminded of excerpts from a favorite hymn (my bold emphasis added):

This is my Father's world,
and to my listening ears
all nature sings, and round me rings
the music of the spheres.

&

This is my Father's world:
He shines in all that's fair;
in the rustling grass I hear Him pass; 
 He speaks to me everywhere.

& "all of this" made me think of that cell phone commercial where the guy moves a little bit this way & a little bit that way ... all the while speaking very clearly & saying w/ varying degrees of frustration... "Can you hear me NOW?!" - & I can't help but wonder .... if that's how God feels at times.

****

²⁴"Consider carefully what you hear," he continued. "With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more. ²⁵Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him." Mark 4: 24-25