Anyone who has ever taught knows that if your student's eyes are not on you, then they probably aren't listening. Yet a pair of peepers could be staring right at you while the brain behind it is only thinking about a cheeseburger. Such are the ways of learning. It takes a great deal of hard work and discipline from the teacher AND the listener. I always hated saying to my students, "Pay attention!" or "Listen while I'm talking." I began to tell them, "Eyes on me" which eventually evolved to, "Eyeballs!" I always get a smile or laugh from my piano students when I say this, but they definitely know that it's time to LISTEN UP.
I'm going to do a little confessing here. I found myself guilty of the pair-of-peepers-but-cheeseburgers-in-the-brain kind of listening the other night at church. Now that I think of it, I'm not even sure if I was looking at Pastor or not. My mind was wandering...I mean REALLY wandering. I was actually worrying and fretting over something that hadn't even happened yet. I'm very talented in the area of borrowing trouble from tomorrow. I had just finished with, "What's going to happen?" and I was moving on to, "What are we going to do about it?" when I realized I had no clue what Pastor was talking about. "Eyeballs, Jane! Pay attention!"
When I think of how often I let my mind slip into another dimension when I should really be listening and learning, I'm reminded of Romans 10:17. "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." If I had approached that church service with the attitude of gleaning all that I possibly could from God's Word that night, just maybe God would have given me the exact answer I needed for my problem.
God doesn't like to fight for our attention. He doesn't want to have to keep saying, "Eyeballs, eyeballs!" The only way our faith will increase is by hearing God's Word. How can we hear his Word if we are not paying attention?
