Stop, Look, and Listen

A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, July 14th, 2024:
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Psalm 85

R. Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people. Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.

R. Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.

R. Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase. Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps.

R. Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

Does anyone else remember, as a small child, being taught how to cross the road? I am not sure if it was on a television program or at school or maybe both, BUT I do remember the three things I was told to do: stop, look, and listen! 

Our psalm for today needs me to use these same tools in my relationship with the Lord, which shouldn’t be a surprise. I mean, these are pretty handy directions! The psalmist begins by calling on God to show me His love and salvation, then goes on to tell me to hear what the Lord has to say. 

Here we are, called to look and listen – but I can’t do either of those things while I am running around with a million distractions in my life. The first thing I must do is STOP! I need to stop filling my life with busy activities, with worries, with excess, or with whatever it is that keeps me distracted. I need to take particular time each day, in prayer, to stop and listen, stop and look. 

The part I find most humbling and beautiful is that God wants to speak and wants to reveal Himself to me – but if I never stop to listen, stop to look, I may never see or hear the Lord. 

The psalmist says “grant  us your salvation” and “speak of peace.” Salvation and peace: two amazing gifts from God. Gifts that are free for me to receive if only I stop and look, stop and listen. 

As I began to focus on a daily prayer life many years ago, I had many ideas about how I thought it should look and feel, how I wanted it to take shape and where I thought it should take me. I was young and foolish, but the Lord took my meagre attempt at prayer and drew me to Him. I feel as if that point in my prayer life was similar to a young child coming home from school with an art project that involved gluing macaroni on paper –  and a loving parent exclaims how beautiful it is and displays it for all to see. 

Now when I look back on my early prayer life (and my macaroni art) I see it as pathetic, but the Lord prizes it, uses it to lead me and teach me that it is not my actions (in prayer or in life) that save me. God is my salvation, and He uses my prayer and my actions (great and small) to show me His salvation and speak peace into my heart. 

Stop, look, and listen isn’t just for crossing the street! Can you take time to stop, look, and listen to what the Lord is saying and showing you? 




Sister Teresa MacDonald

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