As 2019 ended, I noticed a lot of people post about who their top listened-to artists of the year were and about how many hours they spent listening to music. After a few posts I gave in. As I swiped through my phone to see my own results, my mind began to drift, and I began to feel a bit convicted. I’ve had a question on my mind for the past few weeks since. I wonder what my heart and mind would be like if for everyone hour I listened to music (or podcasts), I took at least a minute to pray and a minute to be silent with God.
This is not an indictment of listening to music or learning from podcasts, it’s just a reflection on how the things that I put in me shape me. It’s easy to forget that all of my lifestyle and habits and rhythms form me. Without thinking about it I can spend hundreds of hours listening to anything and everything, but really spend no time in the quiet with God. That actually does shape who I am.
To go further, a lot of music that I listen to is just mindlessly playing in the background, but think about the word “mindless.” It’s a lack of attention and thought and awareness. It’s habitual. Maybe it’s subconscious. Maybe I’m not just listening to music and podcasts, but maybe I’m avoiding the silence where joy and sadness, pleasure and angst, celebration and anger, contentment and discomfort are all found. Maybe I’m not going to music, but rather I’m (unintentionally) running from the real place I need to go.
I mean, what if my habit was to talk with God, or be silent with God, or be attentive to God? What if that was the knee jerk reaction of my life rather than turning on something for entertainment, education, or white noise? What if i didn’t so habitually put in my AirPods but instead listened for His voice?
Please hear my heart: I have a band that I write and put out music with. I listen to a podcast most days of the week. I’m not saying any of this from a place of superiority or as a form of condemnation, I’m just sensing and considering a wonderful invitation from God, that I don’t want to distract myself from. I don’t want to miss out when God is so readily available. I’m just wondering who is better to be entertained by than Jesus? What better top artist than Him? Who could be more engaging to hear than the one Who sang creation into existence? Who is more qualified to be learned from than wisdom Himself? Where else is more wonderful to go to fill the moments of my life than to God Himself?
Maybe my own weakness in this area is an illustration of what GK Chesterton meant when he said, Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” Or as C.S. Lewis wrote, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Maybe my problem is that I don’t deeply trust that Jesus will be more satisfying than anything else. But what if what I really was longing for and what would really satisfy me was not music or podcasts, but God’s attention and presence? What if that was even more readily available than the two clicks to get to my top artists on Spotify? What if it took fewer words to meet with and be satisfied by God than it does to say “Hey Siri”?