Thus says the LORD:
This is what I commanded my people:
Listen to my voice;
then I will be your God and you shall be my people.

Here, the Lord emphasizes the importance of listening to His voice -- something that appears straightforward but can often be very difficult. There are many distractions in life that impede our ability to listen to God and hear Him communicate with us. Most tangibly, I have found social media to be a factor that is increasingly time consuming, and thus, hinders my ability to listen clearly to God. When used in excess, these media platforms can fill our minds with the thoughts and opinions of thousands of strangers, making it difficult to allow time and space to listen to God’s voice as he asks of us in the reading. Listening to God is something that takes dedicated prayer and commitment -- it is not something that transpires when our minds are distracted or preoccupied.  

This Lent, in trying to become more available to hearing what God asks of me, I have given up Snapchat -- a social media platform that provides a lens into the personal lives of friends and offers updates on celebrities and the news. While Snapchat can serve as a great form of communication, I have also found it easy to overuse to a point that it becomes overwhelming. By constantly getting updates and alerts from the app, it became hard to separate myself from my phone and enter a space where I can listen to God and understand what He is telling me. Over the past couple of weeks, it has felt very gratifying to give up an aspect of my life that often inhibited my ability to build my relationship with God.

In each of our lives, there is something that hinders our capability to fully engage and listen to God. In light of the reading today, I encourage you to identify this impediment and explore how you can overcome it in order to better hear God.