SOMETIMES YOU CAN HEAR THE MONKEYS part 2

SOMETIMES YOU CAN HEAR THE MONKEYS

Recently I was in my wife Janet's office when I heard a train pass.
WooWoo !! I love trains. My Dad worked for the Southern Railroad for
over 40 years and his dad, Pop Phillips, worked for the same railroad
for 37 years.

At Pop Phillips funeral, during the sermon, a train passed and whistled.
We all laughed and said the train was carrying him to his new
destination. So, you see, when the train whistled lots of memories came
to the forefront.

"Did you hear the train," I asked Janet. "Yes," she said. Then
she said, "Sometimes you can hear the monkeys."  "What?"  She
laughed. The zoo backs up to our office area and sometimes you can hear
the monkeys.

The monkeys suddenly began swirling in my head. I began to remember the
importance of hearing, of listening to what surrounds us. I thought
first of Rev. George Cox, a chaplain at a hospital in Alabama, who
taught me how "to listen between the words." He had the gift of
hearing ones heart and where one hurt and I thought of what a gift
listening is. What do we really hear?

A few weeks ago, at an outlet mall near Locust Grove, Georgia, I picked
up a book by Warren  Wiersbe, at a used book outlet. Dr. Wiersbe was a
former pastor at Moody Bible Church in Chicago and is a brilliant
biblical scholar. Last night as I was thumbing through this book I found
these words:

"The best way to help discouraged and hurting people is to listen with
your heart and not just with your ears. It's not what they say but why
they say it that is important. Let them know that you understand their
pain by reflecting back to them in different words just what they say to
you. Don't argue or try to convince them with logical reasoning. There
will be a time for that later; meanwhile, patiently accept their
feelings – even their bitter words against God – and build bridges,
not walls.

There is a true consolation in our faith, but it is not dispensed in
convenient doses like cough medicine. "It can only be shared by those
who know what it is like to be so far down in the pit that they feel as
though God has abandoned them. If you want to be a true comforter, there
is a price to pay, and not everybody is willing to pay it.

John Henry Jowett said, "God does not comfort us to make us
comfortable, but to make us comforters." God's comfort is never
given; it is always loaned. God expects us to share with others.

So just remember, "SOMETIMES YOU CAN HEAR THE MONKEYS."

P.S. We all go to the zoo in a couple of weeks. When you hear the
monkeys tell this story.

Brother Dan and Thanks Janet