Our Adult Sunday School is using the Nooma (www.flannel.org) video series as a jumping off point for discussion about faith and spirituality.  This past week we watched the video “Noise” and it the midst of the discussion about silence and the ability (or lack there of) to find it in today’s world, I thought about those things which are very much present in our world but we just don’t seem to hear or see.

During my first year of college, I lived in a dorm room right off Figueroa near downtown Los Angeles.  If you’re not familiar with Figueroa, it’s a very busy street so there are constantly cars going up and down at all times of the day not to mention a few traffic lights which urge the most impatient of drivers to honk their horns the instant the light turns green and the car in front of them isn’t moving.  But the kicker was the fire department was just around the corner and no matter when they left, I always heard their sirens when I was in my room.  It was impossible not to.

But one day my mom called.  I answered the phone and heard my mom start to say something before stopping mid-word.  Then she said, “That’s right, you live right around the corner from the fire department.”  It was only after she said that I noticed the fire engine barreling down Figueroa.  I’m sure my ear drum moved with the sound of the siren, that is I physically heard it, but it just didn’t register.  I’d gotten so used to hearing the sound of sirens that I didn’t hear them - I blocked them out.

As I recounted this story for the adults in Sunday School this past week, I wonder what we hear but don’t really hear.  What are the things (or even people) we see, but don’t really see?  What are those things that are very much a present reality, part of our world, but we don’t even begin to see or hear them?  Sometimes it may be out of familiarity (do we really see our spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends, brothers, sisters?) or an instinctual self-preservation (because it’s too difficult to deal with the reality it’s there).

I suspect this may be the same for God’s action in our world - it’s there, but do we really see it?  Do we hear it?

So I ask, what’s there but neither seen nor heard?

Photo courtesy of MPHDodgeDaytona (rights)