God simply does not do things the way we would. When we think about power and glory and grandeur, we tend to think about the ways that people with power act. One thing that people of power often want to do is to control what is said to them. They expect to dominate all conversations. They talk. Everyone else listens. End of story.

Yet the completely surprising thing about the God of all glory is a God who chooses to be humble, who declares that being a servant is the highest calling and who chooses to listen more than talk. It&8217;s not that God never talks. Far from it. Every day, in every moment of life, God speaks to us through the very beauty and intricacy of creation, through our experience of being human on this planet. God speaks most clearly to us through the simplest words in our Bibles, in stories that are unforgettably human. Yes, God speaks. But then again, not in the way that we expect.

And maybe it is part of our complaint about God. When we pray, we would prefer a God who speaks more than listens. We want to hear answers. We want to hear details. And yet, God is a God who listens far more often than God speaks in words that human ears hear. God engages us at that deeper level, beneath our words, in the wrestlings of our hearts, minds and bodies, in the decisions we keep deep within us, maybe even hidden from ourselves. It is by listening that God draws us out, and as we uncover our hearts, we become different. And so the God of all the universe delights simply in listening to each of us about anything.

It&8217;s a safe bet that the best listeners you know are people who talk less than you do. They draw up a chair, put you on the front porch of their lives and give you the space and the time to talk. People of power usually think themselves too busy for that, too important for that. And yet prayer is exactly that. God gives all the time to us when it comes to words. God is humble and willing to listen.

It takes a combination of great faith and great humility to listen. Lots of things make it hard to listen. It&8217;s like rain on the roof at our church when someone is talking. We have to focus harder or maybe just plain wait until it stops to be able to listen. But it&8217;s why we ask everyone to be quiet during certain moments. We&8217;re trying to make it as easy as possible to listen. That&8217;s what most of Christianity is all about.

We&8217;re lousy at listening, it&8217;s true. We often wonder if God is there, precisely because God chooses listening over talking most of the time.

But the real hope for human life, whether it&8217;s our own life or the life of our whole human race, is that we will finally learn to listen, to learn how to be humble enough to know we need to hear what God and others have to say and courageous enough to open ourselves up to hear it. It&8217;s the heart of all relationships, especially our relationship with God. God is the humble God who listens. And perhaps the deepest gift and the deepest call in all of life are one and the same: to learn to be humble enough to do what God does and listen.

Robert Montgomery serves as the preaching minister at Cahaba Valley Church